Kicking off a school retrofit with 12 RTUs and staggered crane picks on 1/15 and 1/22, and I need a clean 3-week lookahead template that ties manpower, material deliveries, and controls/electrical handoffs together. What are you using — MS Project, Smartsheet, or a simpler sheet — that your techs update in the field, and do you have a sample that shows crew shifts (e.g., 4 techs, 10-hour days) and daily dependencies?
I’ve had the best luck in Smartsheet for a “3-week lookahead” the crew touches: one sheet for manpower/material/controls with a mobile update form tied by QR in the gang box so techs log shift changes right after each pick. For the 1/15 and 1/22 crane days I pin a locked row per RTU with lift window and required headcount so late delivery notes can’t override it. Small caveat: it’s great on phones but offline isn’t, so if service is spotty I mirror to a Google Sheet and sync at lunch.
We keep MS Project for the master, but for the field 3-week lookahead I use an Airtable grid with a Gantt view filtered to 21 days, crane picks on 1/15 and 1/22 locked as milestones, and fields for “crew” (e.g., “4 techs A shift”), material ETA, and controls/electrical handoff. Techs update it on their phones without juggling the whole plan — MS Project alone is overkill, — and you can flip to Kanban by trade when manpower shifts to keep handoffs clean. Starter base that’s close: Templates; if the district needs something formal we export a weekly CSV to the GC.