Knowledge · Scheduling
Baselines and real progress tracking,
measuring the job against what was promised.
A schedule that only shows where the job is going cannot show how it is going. This reference covers the baseline (the approved programme, frozen), the two dates every task should carry, what makes a task genuinely done, the evidence behind a status, the weekly drift review, the discipline around resetting a baseline, and why honest progress is the input claims and cash flow depend on.
01 / Overview
What a baseline is
A baseline is the approved construction programme frozen at a point in time, usually at contract signing or at construction start. From that moment it stops being the plan the site works to and becomes the reference the working plan is measured against. It is one of the core instruments of residential construction scheduling, and it exists for a single purpose, to make drift measurable. A schedule with no baseline can still sequence a site, but it cannot answer the only question a client, a bank or the builder's own cash forecast actually asks, which is how the job is tracking against what was promised.
The working arrangement is two dates per task. The baseline date says when the task was planned to happen; the current date says when it is now expected. The current schedule is allowed to move every week, because real jobs move. The baseline is not allowed to move at all, except through the formal reset discipline covered below. Keep both and every task on the job can report its own drift; keep only the current date and the job is always, by definition, exactly on its schedule.
Why it matters
The same gap runs through the whole industry at a larger scale. An approval is not a home, a signed contract is not a finished job, and a programme is not progress; the approvals versus completions guide covers that distinction at the national level, and the baseline is the same idea applied inside one job. Intent and delivery drift apart quietly, and the businesses that stay out of trouble are the ones that measure the drift while it is still small. On a job, the baseline is the instrument that does the measuring, and everything downstream of it, the claim, the forecast, the client relationship, inherits whichever level of honesty it was run with.
02 / The lifecycle
Where the baseline sits in the workflow
Upstream of the baseline sits the work of building a programme worth freezing. The task logic comes from the critical path and task dependencies, and the dates only hold if procurement realities were built in, which is the subject of lead times and sequencing. Freezing a programme that was never achievable does not create a baseline, it creates a grievance with dates on it. The practical build-up of a residential programme is covered in the residential construction scheduling guide.
Downstream, the baseline and the progress record against it feed the money side of the job. Stage claims rest on stages being genuinely complete, the cash forecast rests on claim dates that come from the real programme, and delay and variation records rest on being able to show what was planned and what actually happened. The baseline is where the schedule stops being a site tool and becomes a business record.
03 / Process workflow
Running a job against its baseline
Eight steps, from freezing the approved programme to feeding honest status into claims and cash. The definition of done in step two is the one most builders skip, and the one that decides whether the rest works.
- 01
Freeze the baseline
At contract or at construction start, take the approved programme and freeze a copy of it. That copy stops being a plan and becomes a reference. Nothing edits it, ever; the working schedule moves and the baseline stands still so the movement can be measured.
- 02
Define done per task, in checkable terms
Before the job starts, write what done means for every task in terms someone can check. The frame is done when it passed frame inspection, waterproofing is done when the certificate is on file, not when a trade said nearly. This one decision prevents most of the arguments the job would otherwise have.
- 03
Record status from site as it happens
Progress gets recorded where it happens, by the person who saw it, on the day. A site diary entry, dated photos and inspection results captured at the time cost minutes; the same record reconstructed at claim time costs an evening and holds less weight.
- 04
Hold two dates per task
Every task carries the baseline date (planned then) and the current date (expected now). Neither replaces the other. The current date runs the site; the gap between the two is the drift, and it is the most honest number on the job.
- 05
Review drift weekly
Once a week, walk the variance between baseline and current. Which tasks moved, whether the movement sits on the critical path, and whether the drift is recovering or compounding. A drift caught at one week is a resequencing exercise; the same drift found at six weeks is a dispute.
- 06
Decide the response while options exist
Small drift off the critical path gets watched. Drift on the critical path gets a recovery decision, resequence, re-order, add resource, or accept the new date. Accepted drift on a contract milestone triggers the client conversation now, not at handover.
- 07
Rebaseline only on a legitimate reset
An approved variation that changes scope, or a granted extension of time, legitimately resets the affected dates and the baseline is re-issued with a record of why. Anything else that moves the baseline is the goalposts walking, and the job loses its only honest reference.
- 08
Feed honest status into claims and cash
A stage claimed is a stage genuinely complete, evidenced by the site record, and the cash forecast is re-run whenever the programme moves. Progress status is not paperwork about the schedule; it is the input the money side of the business runs on.
04 / Key mechanics
The moving parts of honest progress
Six mechanics that together turn a schedule into a measuring instrument. Each is simple on its own; the discipline is running all six at once, every week, on every job.
The baseline
The approved programme frozen at contract or start. It is not the schedule the job runs to; it is the reference the running schedule is measured against. Without it, drift has nothing to drift from.
Current versus baseline
Two dates per task, planned then and expected now. The working schedule is allowed to move; the baseline is not. The distance between them is the one number that cannot be argued with.
Done means checked
A task is complete when the work passed its check, an inspection, a certificate, a walkthrough against a written standard. Completions, not intentions. Nearly is a status for the current date, never for done.
Progress evidence
Site diaries, dated photos and inspection results are the record that a status is true. Evidence captured on the day it happened is cheap; the same evidence reconstructed for a dispute is expensive and weaker.
The drift review
The weekly comparison of current dates against baseline dates, read against the critical path. Its output is a decision, watch, recover, or have the client conversation, never just a report.
Rebaselining
A deliberate, recorded reset of the baseline when an approved variation or granted extension of time changes what was promised. Rare by design. A baseline that moves every review was never a baseline.
The drift review and the client conversation
Common practice among organised builders is a weekly drift review, a standing look at the variance between baseline and current dates, read against the critical path. Most of what it finds needs nothing more than watching. The two findings that demand action are drift on the critical path, which needs a recovery decision while recovery is still cheap, and drift on a contract milestone, which needs a client conversation. The trigger for that conversation is simple to state and hard to honour, the week the builder accepts internally that a promised date will move is the week the client hears it. Every week of delay after that point converts a scheduling problem into a trust problem, and trust problems do not resequence.
Rebaselining discipline
A baseline earns its authority by not moving, so the cases where it legitimately moves need to be narrow and recorded. An approved variation that changes the scope, or an extension of time granted under the contract, changes what was promised, and the baseline should be re-issued to reflect the new promise, with the old baseline kept and the reason for the reset written down. What does not justify a reset is the schedule having slipped. Rebaselining over performance drift is quietly moving the goalposts, and its cost is deferred rather than avoided; the job reports on time every week until the week it is undeniably late, and by then the record has been edited into uselessness.
How status feeds claims and cash
On a stage-payment contract, progress status is the claim trigger. A stage claimed is a representation to the client that the stage is complete, so the standard is a stage genuinely complete, evidenced by the site record, before the progress claim goes out. The same status drives the forward view of money. A slipping stage moves the claim behind it while most of the costs keep falling due on their terms, which is why cash flow forecasting depends on the programme being honest. A builder whose progress status runs two weeks optimistic is running a cash forecast that is wrong by two weeks in the direction that hurts.
05 / Best practice
How experienced builders keep status honest
The operator's observation is that optimistic status is the most expensive lie a job tells itself, because everything downstream prices it as truth. The classic symptom is the task reported at ninety per cent done for three consecutive weeks. That number is not a measurement, it is the site telling the office it does not know, phrased in a way that ends the conversation. Nobody involved is dishonest; the trade genuinely believes tomorrow finishes it, the supervisor genuinely wants it finished, and the claim, the forecast and the client update are all quietly built on a number that measured nothing.
The fix is not arguing about percentages during the job, it is removing the need for them before the job starts. Experienced builders define done for each task in checkable terms while the programme is being built, the frame is done when it passed frame inspection, the waterproofing is done when the certificate is on file, the piers are done when forty of forty are poured. Against definitions like that, status stops being an estimate anyone has to defend and becomes an observation anyone can make. Where a task genuinely resists a binary check, the honest question is not what per cent is done but how many crew-days remain, because remaining duration is the number the schedule actually needs.
Where software fits the workflow
Traditionally the baseline lives in a planning file, progress lives in phone calls and a paper diary, and the two meet in a spreadsheet at claim time, which is exactly where the optimism gets discovered. In VIABUILD the schedule carries the baseline and current dates together, so drift is a standing view rather than a reconstruction, and ViaSite is the natural home of the progress evidence, the diary entries, dated photos and completed checks captured on site on the day the work happened. Because the site record and the programme share one understanding of the job, a status is only ever entered once, and the claim behind it arrives with its evidence already attached.
06 / Australian considerations
Baselines, evidence and payment in Australia
Progress tracking is an internal discipline, but in Australia the stakes around it are set by contract legislation and payment law. The points below are labelled by evidence class; requirements differ by state and change over time, so confirm the current source before relying on any of them.
- Legislation. Each state and territory's domestic building contract legislation regulates progress payments on residential work, and several jurisdictions tie permitted payments to the completion of defined stages. Under those regimes, claiming a stage that is not genuinely complete is not just a relationship risk, it can put the builder on the wrong side of the Act. Confirm the stage definitions and payment rules with the regulator in your jurisdiction.
- Legislation. Security of payment legislation in each state and territory governs payment claims on construction work, with strict timeframes on claims and responses. Its application to residential work varies significantly by jurisdiction, so confirm coverage and current requirements with the relevant state authority before relying on it either way.
- Common practice. Mandatory inspections at defined stages by the building surveyor or certifier are a feature of every jurisdiction's building approval process, though the stages and titles differ. A passed mandatory inspection is the strongest checkable definition of done available for those stages, and builders commonly anchor their stage status to it.
- Industry best practice. Contemporaneous records, site diaries, dated photos and inspection results made at the time of the work, are the accepted evidence in extension of time claims, payment disputes and defect matters. A record created on the day consistently outweighs one reconstructed later, which makes the daily site record a legal instrument as much as a management one.
- Common practice. Residential building contracts commonly require delay to be notified within a set period for an extension of time to be claimable. The baseline-versus-actual record is what makes that notice specific and defensible; without it, the builder is asserting delay from memory. Notice periods and entitlement rules are contract and jurisdiction specific, so confirm against the contract in hand.
07 / Common mistakes
Where progress tracking actually goes wrong
Each of these is recognisable, mechanical and avoidable. None of them starts as dishonesty; all of them end as a number nobody can trust.
Percentage complete by feel
A task reported at ninety per cent for three consecutive weeks is not ninety per cent done. Percentages guessed from the ute window measure confidence, not work, and confidence is not a schedulable quantity.
The baseline quietly moved
Re-saving the baseline whenever the schedule slips makes every review show zero drift. The job looks on time all the way to the week it is unmistakably months late, and by then the record proves nothing.
Status without evidence
A status nobody can point to a photo, diary entry or inspection result for is an opinion. Opinions surface as facts at claim time, which is the most expensive place to discover they were opinions.
Only the finish date tracked
Holding the baseline as a single handover date hides everything. Drift accumulates task by task for months and appears all at once at the end, when no recovery option is left except apology.
The claim ahead of the work
Claiming a stage that is nearly complete borrows from a future the job has not built yet. If the stage stalls, the money and the work are now out of step, and the gap compounds into the next claim.
The client conversation deferred
Drift on a contract milestone that the builder has known about for six weeks reads to a client like six weeks of concealment. The early conversation is uncomfortable; the late one is adversarial.
08 / Practical example
A worked ninety per cent
Illustrative only, not a benchmark. A single-storey home is at frame stage, baselined to pass frame inspection in week fourteen. In weeks thirteen, fourteen and fifteen the supervisor's report says the frame is ninety per cent done. Nothing on the job has a definition of done, so nobody can say what the missing ten per cent is, and the office keeps the frame claim pencilled in for this week, three weeks running. The forecast has the claim landing; the site has a carpenter waiting on steel lintels that were never ordered against their lead time.
Run the same three weeks with checkable definitions and two dates per task. The frame task is done when it passes frame inspection; its sub-items are countable, and the lintel line shows not delivered in week twelve. The drift review flags the frame inspection date moving from week fourteen to week sixteen while the baseline holds at fourteen, the claim behind it moves in the forecast the same day, and the client hears about a two-week movement in week twelve with a reason and a recovery plan attached. Nothing about the lintels changed between the two versions of this story. The difference is that one job measured its drift at two weeks and the other discovered it at claim time, and the discovery version costs more every single time.
09 / FAQ
Common questions.
It is a frozen copy of the approved construction programme, captured at contract signing or at construction start, that is deliberately never edited afterwards. The working schedule keeps moving as the job unfolds; the baseline stands still so the movement is measurable. In practice each task ends up carrying two dates, the baseline date it was planned for and the current date it is now expected, and the gap between them is the drift. A schedule without a baseline can still run a site, but it cannot answer the question of how the job is going against what was promised.
When the promise itself has formally changed, not when performance against it has slipped. An approved variation that adds or removes scope, or a granted extension of time under the contract, legitimately resets the affected dates, and the reset should be recorded with the reason and the approval behind it. Slippage the builder simply wants to stop seeing is not a reason. A useful test many builders apply is whether they would show the client the old baseline next to the new one; a legitimate rebaseline survives that comparison, quiet goalpost-moving does not.
By preferring countable units and checkable definitions over judgement wherever possible. Ten of forty piers poured is twenty-five per cent of that task and nobody needs to debate it; a task defined as done when it passes its inspection is either passed or it is not. Where a percentage genuinely has to be estimated, tie it to remaining duration (how many crew-days are left) rather than to effort spent, because the last ten per cent of most tasks holds the fiddly work that consumed the previous three optimistic reports.
The contemporaneous site record. Site diary entries noting what was worked, who attended and what held things up, dated photos of the work in place, delivery dockets, and inspection or certification results. The value is in the timestamp; a record made on the day carries weight in an extension of time claim, a payment dispute or an insurance matter that a reconstruction from memory months later does not. The same record that proves a status is true also happens to be the record that defends the builder later, which is why experienced operators treat the diary as non-negotiable.
Directly, because on most residential contracts the claim schedule is expressed in stages, and a stage claimed is a representation that the stage is complete. Honest progress status means the claim goes out the day it is genuinely claimable, with the evidence already attached, rather than early on optimism or late on disorganisation. The connection runs the other way too; when the drift review shows a stage slipping, the claim behind it slips with it, and the cash flow forecast needs to know that the week it happens, not the month the claim fails to arrive.
10 / Terms
Glossary for this topic
Baseline (the approved programme frozen at contract or start), current schedule (the working programme that moves as the job runs), drift or variance (the gap between baseline and current dates), definition of done (the checkable condition under which a task is complete), progress evidence (the contemporaneous site record behind a status), drift review (the weekly comparison of current against baseline), rebaselining (the formal, recorded reset of a baseline after an approved change). Definitions for the wider vocabulary live in the construction glossary.
The baseline is frozen at contract, and the contract is also where stage payments, variations and extensions of time get their rules, which makes residential building contracts the natural next reference from here.
11 / Keep reading
Related knowledge, guides and features
12 / Further reading
Primary sources
- Your state or territory's building regulator and fair trading body, for the domestic building contract rules on progress payments and defined stages, and for the mandatory inspection stages in your jurisdiction.
- Your state or territory's security of payment authority, for the payment claim regime that applies to construction work in your jurisdiction and the extent to which it covers residential building.
Progress you can prove, not progress you were told.
VIABUILD holds the baseline, the current programme, the site record and the claims on one understanding of the job, so drift is measured the week it happens and a stage claimed is a stage genuinely complete.