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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.

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He realized this resistance was like a shadow, and the darker the shadow was, the brighter the light shone. It was a part of me, and it would always be with me. When it was at its strongest, when things seemed to be at their worst, that’s when the brightest hope could be found. I should learn not just how to fight it, he told me, but, like every enemy, how to love it.

The End of the World Running Club by Adrian J. Walker

The Complete Progress Meeting Playbook

Here's how to run progress meetings that actually move the needle.

The progress meeting is the single most important touchpoint between your schedule and reality. When it runs well, you walk out with clean data, clear decisions, and a schedule the entire team trusts.

That is a powerful position to be in.

After 15+ years running schedule updates on billion dollar programs, I have refined a process that works. Prework. Agenda. Post work. And a few tricks that make the whole thing click.

Whether you are a senior scheduler looking to sharpen your process or early in your career building one for the first time, this playbook will give you a framework you can use right away.

Let's get into it.

Before the Meeting (Prework)

The best progress meetings start well before anyone walks into the room.

The goal of prework is simple. Walk in already knowing 80% of the story so you can spend your face time confirming, clarifying, and solving problems together.

What the scheduler should do:

Run a schedule health check. Review open ends, missing logic, negative lags, and excessive float. Use a tool like Nodes & Links to automate this. Knowing the health of the schedule before the meeting lets you focus on the right conversations.
Set up your update layout. Activity ID, Name, Original Duration, Remaining Duration, Actual Start, Actual Finish, Percent Complete, Total Float. Having this ready saves valuable time during the meeting.
Distribute the 3 to 6 week look ahead. Get it in front of field teams early so they can review upcoming work and mark up anything that has changed.
Review the last narrative. What issues were raised? What actions were committed to? What is still open? This context turns a data collection exercise into a productive conversation.
Pre populate known progress. If you have daily reports, field logs, or a tool like Stride that captures real time progress, enter what you already know. This frees up meeting time for the conversations that matter most.

What attendees should do:

Review the look ahead and note any changes
Come prepared with known issues, delays, and resource updates
Bring actual dates. The more accurate the input, the more useful the schedule becomes for everyone.

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Key Takeaway: If you can answer "What changed since last time?" before the meeting starts, you are set up for a great meeting.

The Meeting (60 Minutes)

Keep it tight. Keep it focused. Respect people's time.

A well run progress meeting for a single project should land between 30 and 60 minutes. Here is a structure that works.

Time	Agenda Item	Owner
5 min	Opening. Safety moment. Confirm data date. Review last meeting's action items.	Meeting Lead
5 min	Headline status. Percent complete. Key milestones. Critical path summary.	Scheduler
25 min	Progress walk through. Each area or discipline. Actual starts, finishes, remaining durations, percent complete. Flag variances.	Scheduler + Area Leads
10 min	Issues and risks. Delays, resource gaps, weather, scope changes. Tie each one to schedule impact.	All
10 min	Look ahead. Next 3 to 6 weeks. Confirm upcoming starts and crew readiness.	Scheduler + Supers
5 min	Close. Summarize decisions. Assign action items with owners and due dates.	Meeting Lead

A few things that make this work well:

Walk the schedule by area or zone, not by activity ID. Field teams think in physical locations, not WBS codes. Meeting them where they are makes for better, faster conversations.

Encourage specificity. Instead of "we're about 60% done," aim for remaining duration estimates and actual dates. The more precise the input, the more the schedule can do its job as a decision support tool.

When a big issue surfaces, capture it and assign a follow up working session. Keeping the progress meeting on track means saving deep problem solving for the right room with the right people.

Close with a clear read back of every action item, owner, and due date. This small step builds accountability and trust across the team.

After the Meeting (Post Work)

This is where the value of the meeting really comes to life.

The faster you process what was discussed, the more accurate and useful the schedule becomes for the entire project team.

Within 24 hours:

Send meeting minutes. Key progress, decisions, and action items with owners and due dates. Keep it to one page.
Input progress into the schedule. All actual dates, remaining durations, and percent complete. Do this while the conversation is fresh.
Recalculate the schedule. Check for out of sequence progress. Review your retained logic vs progress override settings.
Gut check the results. Does the forecast make sense? Any critical path shifts? New negative float? If something looks off, a quick call to clarify goes a long way.

Within 48 to 72 hours:

Distribute the updated schedule. Gantt chart, look ahead, and variance reports.
Write the schedule narrative. Critical path, variances, recovery actions, risks. This is your evidence trail and your communication tool.
Update the action register. Close completed items. Add new ones.
Archive everything. Native file (.xer or .mpp), narrative, and all supporting docs in a version controlled location. This documentation protects the project and the team.

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Key Takeaway: When the updated schedule is published within 72 hours of the meeting, the team always has a current picture to plan against. That consistency builds trust.

Tips and Tricks (The Force Multipliers)

These are the small adjustments that take a solid process and make it great.

Record the meeting transcript.

Most tools like Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet have built in transcription now. A searchable record of exactly what was said, by whom, and when is incredibly valuable. Pair the transcript with your meeting minutes and you have airtight documentation that supports the entire team.

Use AI to accelerate post work.

Take that transcript and feed it to Claude, ChatGPT, or a purpose built construction AI. You can summarize the meeting, draft the narrative, flag discrepancies between verbal commitments and schedule data, and generate clean action item lists. What used to take hours now takes minutes.

AI is not replacing the scheduler. It is making the scheduler faster, sharper, and more valuable. The professionals who learn to use these tools now are positioning themselves to lead in the years ahead.

Use a progress input tool like Stride.

Let field teams input actual dates, percent complete, and remaining durations from their phone or tablet. That data flows straight into P6 without the scheduler re keying everything. Faster updates, fewer errors, and field teams who feel real ownership over the schedule because they are contributing to it directly.

Walk the site.

Get out from behind the computer at least once per update cycle. Seeing the actual conditions helps you validate what you hear in the meeting. It also builds credibility with field teams. They respect a scheduler who shows up and understands what is happening on the ground.

Keep the room small and focused.

5 to 8 people is the sweet spot. If someone just needs to be informed, send them the minutes. Smaller meetings mean better participation and more productive conversations.

Same day, same time, every cycle.

Consistency builds habit. Habit builds reliability. When the team knows exactly when the progress meeting happens, preparation improves and attendance holds steady.

Make It Yours

Every project is different. Every team has its own rhythm.

Take what works from this playbook. Adapt it to your context. Build a process your team trusts and follows.

The schedulers who run the best progress meetings are the ones who prepare thoroughly, communicate clearly, and follow through consistently.

If you are going to do it, do it right.

Now go make your next progress meeting the best one your team has ever had.

Progress Meeting Notes

Copy and paste this prompt into ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude.

Act as a precision-focused Construction Scheduling Assistant supporting a professional Construction Planner/Scheduler in converting raw progress meeting transcripts and notes into polished, newsletter-ready update deliverables for a formal schedule update cycle.

Your task is to analyze the provided project context—Project Name, Data Date, Update Period, Scheduling Software (P6, Microsoft Project, or other), Baseline Completion Date, Current Forecast Completion Date—and transform the meeting transcript into a concise, executive-friendly internal newsletter that captures all critical schedule intelligence without assumptions. For example, if a superintendent states “concrete started last Monday and we’re about 60% done,” extract the Actual Start, Percent Complete, forecast implications, and flag anything requiring confirmation.

Format the output as a clean, visually structured newsletter with clear section headers and compact subsections including: Project Snapshot (key dates, overall status, percent complete), Progress Highlights by Area, Critical Path & Variance Summary, Risks & Mitigation Actions, Action Items & Ownership (table format), Progress Data Table (structured for schedule entry), Variance & Follow-Up Flags, and 3–6 Week Look Ahead (upcoming starts, constraints, prerequisites, crew readiness).

Use tight paragraphs, scannable bullet points, and clean tables suitable for executive circulation. Maintain a professional, confident, and factual tone—clear enough for leadership, precise enough for scheduling control—while explicitly flagging any missing or unclear information that must be confirmed before finalizing. Before you begin ask me 3 questions to help improve your answer.