Skip to main content

Your First Schedule PRO

Goal: Turn a priced, costed scenario into a working CPM schedule with a Gantt chart, an S-curve, and an exported programme.

You'll need:

  • A scenario with matched items and URAs — schedule durations are derived from URA daily-output figures. See Coverage, URA & Cost Review. Items without a URA get a placeholder one-day duration, which isn't useful for a real programme.

Step 1 — Set your calendar and start date​

  1. Open Settings → Project Calendar.
  2. Check/uncheck Working Days for your working week, and add holidays under Holiday Exceptions (one at a time with Add Date, or in bulk with Import .ics).
  3. Click Save Calendar.

Project Calendar settings showing working days checkboxes, holiday exceptions, and scheduling defaults

  1. Open the 4D/5D Dashboard from the left sidebar — it opens in a new tab.
  2. Select your scenario from the dropdown, then set the Project start date field next to it.

Schedule toolbar showing the scenario selector and Project start date field

Step 2 — Generate the baseline schedule​

  1. Click Refresh in the toolbar (shown as Generate Schedule the first time, before any schedule exists for this scenario).

Conio runs the CPM forward/backward pass and renders the Gantt using a simple sequential order for any tasks with no predecessor links yet.

Step 3 — Sequence it with AI Schedule (optional but recommended)​

A purely sequential first pass usually front-loads cost unrealistically. Let AI Schedule infer construction-logical predecessors instead:

  1. Click AI Schedule in the toolbar.
  2. Leave the defaults (Max iterations 3, Accept threshold 0.65, Protect my links on) unless you have a reason to change them.
  3. Click Run Optimisation.

AI Schedule modal showing Max iterations, Accept threshold, Protect my links, and Phase grouping controls

The AI iterates until the S-curve quality score clears the accept threshold or the iteration limit is reached. Tasks it couldn't confidently sequence are highlighted amber for manual review.

Step 4 — Review the Gantt and S-curve​

4D/5D schedule page showing the Gantt with linked tasks and AI Schedule button in toolbar

  1. On the Gantt (4D) tab, check the critical path (red) makes sense and no task durations look wrong.
  2. Switch to the S-Curve (5D) tab to review the cash-flow distribution and its quality badge.

Step 5 — Export​

Click Export and choose a format: Microsoft Project (.xml) or Excel Pivot Table (.xlsx) to hand off the programme, Power BI Package (.xlsx) for a dashboard, or one of the three PNG chart exports for a quick image.

Export dropdown showing Microsoft Project, Excel, Power BI, and PNG chart export options

What you should see​

A Gantt with linked tasks and a visible critical path, an S-curve with a "Good" or "Fair" quality badge, and an exported file that opens correctly in the target application.

If something's wrong​

SymptomWhere to look
Every task is exactly one day longItems are missing URAs — see Coverage, URA & Cost Review
AI Schedule leaves several tasks amberUnscheduled and Amber-Flagged Tasks
S-curve score stays "Poor" after several iterationsAI Schedule — Understanding the S-curve quality score
Your BOQ has 300+ items or 20+ sections and AI Schedule is slowHandling Large BOQs

Next​

You've completed the full first-time workflow — tables, matching, price book, costing, and scheduling. For anything beyond this, the full reference documentation covers advanced matcher tuning, template curation, large-BOQ handling, and manual schedule adjustments in depth.