In partnership with
Welcome back to Beyond Deadlines newsletter—a free perk for people looking to improve in Planning and Scheduling. Each week, we provide tactics, prompts, jobs and food for thought. We want you to succeed today, tomorrow and throughout the rest of your career.
When you start a project, start with rubbish. Adopt a “zero-draft” approach and just put some words, any words, on the page. Fail cheaply: make learning-sized mistakes. Protect your progress from the harsh critic in your head.
When it all clicks.
Why does business news feel like it’s written for people who already get it?
Morning Brew changes that.
It’s a free newsletter that breaks down what’s going on in business, finance, and tech — clearly, quickly, and with enough personality to keep things interesting. The result? You don’t just skim headlines. You actually understand what’s going on.
Try it yourself and join over 4 million professionals reading daily.
Critical path analysis is one of those skills that looks simple on the surface.
Run a filter. Highlight the red bars. Done.
But we all know that's not true. There's an almost infinite number of ways the critical path can be messed with.
The critical path is supposed to be your project's heartbeat. It tells you which activities drive your end date. Get it wrong and you're managing noise while the real problems hide in plain sight.
Here's how to analyze it properly.
The Classical Steps
1. Verify Your Logic First
Before you trust your critical path, check your relationships. Missing links, broken logic, and open ends will give you a fake critical path every time. Run a schedule health check. Fix the foundation before you analyze the output.
2. Audit Your Calendars and Constraints
Calendars and constraints are silent schedule killers. A misassigned calendar can add weeks to your critical path without anyone noticing. Hard constraints can force activities into critical status artificially. Review each critical activity for the right calendar assignment. Check for constraints that override logic. These hidden settings drive more bad critical paths than bad logic ever will.
3. Use Longest Path, Not Total Float
Total float can mislead you when you have multiple calendars, constraints, or negative float. Switch your settings to Longest Path. This traces the actual chain of activities driving your end date regardless of float values.
4. Trace the Path Activity by Activity
Don't just look at the filtered list. Walk the path from start to finish. Open each activity. Confirm it logically belongs in the sequence. If an activity doesn't feel right on the critical path, something upstream is broken.
5. Validate Durations Against Reality
A duration that looks reasonable in P6 might be fantasy in the field. Compare your critical path durations to actual crew productivity and resource availability. Overly optimistic durations on critical activities are schedule killers.
6. Identify Near Critical Paths
Activities with 10 days or less of float are one delay away from becoming critical. Map these near critical paths. They're your early warning system.
7. Look for Resource Conflicts
Your critical path might assume unlimited resources. If two critical activities need the same crane or the same crew at the same time, you've got a problem the software won't show you.
8. Confirm the Build Sequence Makes Sense
Your critical path should tell a logical construction story. If the sequence doesn't match how the work would actually be built, your path is theoretical, not practical.
9. Validate It With the Project Team
Print out your critical path and walk it with your superintendent, your project manager, and your key subcontractors. Ask them one question. Does this match how we're actually building this project? If the people doing the work don't recognize the critical path, it's wrong. Their field knowledge will catch errors your software never will.
Tips Nobody Talks About
1. Multiple Critical Paths Are a Feature, Not a Bug
When you have several paths with zero float, don't panic. This is a sign of a well loaded schedule with parallel work streams. The real question is whether you have the resources to execute all of them simultaneously.
2. The Critical Path Should Change
If your critical path never moves from update to update, something is wrong. Construction is dynamic. Progress happens unevenly. A static critical path usually means your updates aren't reflecting field reality.
3. The Critical Path Is Missing Context
Software calculates logic. It doesn't account for the foreman who knows a shortcut, the supplier relationship that can expedite material, or the crew that always outperforms their estimates. The human element shapes your real critical path in ways the CPM algorithm can't see. Talk to your team. They know things the schedule doesn't.
Your schedule is a decision making tool. Analyze it like one.
Challenge the Critical Path
Act like a senior construction scheduler and forensic schedule analyst specializing in Primavera P6 baseline validation, critical path method (CPM) diagnostics, and schedule risk exposure.
Your goal is to review a project schedule provided as either (a) an Excel export from Primavera P6, or (b) a PDF of the schedule report, and challenge the critical path that is presented. You are not here to accept the stated critical path; you are here to test it, recreate it, and stress it.
Task: Ingest the file, reconstruct the schedule logic, independently derive the critical path, compare it to the presented critical path, and produce a concise set of high-impact challenges and corrective actions.
Process (follow in order):
Identify the file type (P6 Excel export vs PDF). Extract or infer: activity IDs/names, WBS, durations, calendars, relationships (FS/SS/FF/SF), lags, constraints, milestone types, data date, remaining duration, actuals, float, and baseline fields (if present).
Validate schedule integrity: open ends, multiple starts/finishes, missing predecessors/successors, excessive lags, long durations, hard constraints, negative float, out-of-sequence progress, calendar inconsistencies, and logic density by WBS/area.
Independently compute/approximate the critical path using the extracted logic (or the closest feasible reconstruction). Explain your method and any assumptions if the export/report omits fields.
Compare: Presented critical path vs your derived critical path. Flag where the presented path is likely distorted (constraints, lags, logic gaps, calendar tricks, progress status).
Provide targeted challenges: the top issues that, if corrected, would materially change the critical path or the forecast finish.
Output requirements (use headings and bullets):
Schedule facts: data date, planned finish, # activities, # relationships, calendars, constraint count
Critical path comparison: a small table listing key activities/milestones on each path and why they differ
Findings: prioritized list with evidence (activity IDs) and impact on finish/float
Recommended fixes: specific logic/constraint/calendar changes
Risk/next steps: what to verify, what to re-run in P6, and what decisions the team should make
If any critical inputs are missing, state exactly what is missing and proceed with best-effort assumptions rather than stopping.
Take a deep breath and work on this problem step-by-step.
Company - CoreWeave
Location - Bellevue, WA
Company - Amazon (AWS)
Location - Seattle, WA
Company - Disney
Location - Lake Buena Vista, FL
We have no connection to these jobs or companies. Our goal is simply to help you land the job of your dreams.
Sponsored
MGMT Playbook
Practical management insights straight to your inbox every Wednesday.
This week’s episode we dive into Automated Progress with Computer Vision. Watch or Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Youtube.
Thank you for reading.
Check out Micah, Greg and Beyond Deadlines on LinkedIn.
Sign up for our LinkedIn newsletter.
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel.
Listen to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Visit our website.
See you next week,