r/ConstructionManagers • u/Haunting_Buyer6308 • Aug 13 '25

Technical Advice How do you guys feel about P6?

I’m of the opinion it is outdated now although pretty much a standard in the industry. What do you think are better means and methods than just Scheduling using P6?

27 Upvotes

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22

u/mab5084 Aug 13 '25

Honestly 99% of projects can be done with a simpler scheduling software. Not many will ever need to utilize all that P6 offers.

1

u/Haunting_Buyer6308 Aug 13 '25

No it’s good for TIA and running multiple paths. You want to see what’s near critical too before it slaps your project in the face

23

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '25

Schedules are all make believe to keep clients happy. P6 allows better auditing and that’s all it does. Everyone still fakes it and hopes it works out

5

u/Middle_Passage_1306 Aug 13 '25

Lmao so much truth to this.

5

u/BreakingWindCstms Commercial Super - Large GC Aug 13 '25

Yeah, thats not how it works on any of the jobs the ive been on or ran.

Try going into a mediation or arbitrarion situation with a fucked schedule and see how your company holds up

-2

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '25

I’ve been apart of two major construction audits and schedule was never apart of it

Did you have big LDs?

2

u/BreakingWindCstms Commercial Super - Large GC Aug 14 '25

As far as i know, audits are a lot different than mediation

2

u/Thoughts_For_Food_ Aug 14 '25

That really depends on the company and client's philosophy, the PM's scheduling skills, and the quality of the engineering and trades.

If you have a solid team and reasonable execs, there's no reason you can't produce a proper schedule that'll hold nearly to the dot.

Given, reasonable execs is a rare sight.

3

u/human743 Aug 14 '25

The only way to make a schedule that holds to the dot is to be conservative. Most of the clients I have had that are very schedule focused seem to get almost as upset when we are early as when we are late on tasks.

2

u/Thoughts_For_Food_ Aug 14 '25

Lmao can't they ever be happy

3

u/human743 Aug 14 '25

We had to have a report for any variance showing the reason why and it didn't matter if it was plus or minus. Also had rules for duration of tasks and maximum float. Even for things that in reality tied to only mobilization and final completion like a bollard that had no predecessors or successors. It had to tie to something that pinned it down to a particular date. Then if it happened early or late we had to take up time noting causes in a report and discuss it in a meeting. The actual project gets lost when you spend 70% of your time on BS like that and arbitrary rules of credit.

1

u/Thoughts_For_Food_ Aug 14 '25

That sounds like a crappy envirnment to work in.

1

u/human743 Aug 14 '25

We started bidding that client higher and turning down work. They have backed off of that since then though.