A Sunday Ritual

Before Mantic, I had a Sunday ritual: I would spend the afternoon glued to my laptop, prepping my two-week lookahead schedule for the week. It often meant hours of adjusting timelines to account for unforeseen conditions delaying MEP work, change orders disrupting the sequence, or a rain delay from weeks ago still rippling through my schedule. Even after painstakingly revising everything, I knew one thing for certain: this plan would likely change again by Tuesday.

Sound familiar? If you've ever experienced a similar scheduling grind, you know how draining it can be. What's worse, is the all this time spent on updates pulls you away from what truly matters: solving on-site problems and keeping the project moving forward.

As both a Project Manager and eventually the developer of Mantic, I've spent countless hours thinking about this problem. Today, I want to share some practical solutions - starting with free tools you can use right now, and then showing you where construction scheduling is headed.

The AI Hype

There has been a lot of hype around AI, it can get exhausting at times. But the truth is, AI has a lot of potential in our industry where every project is different, and where change is the only constant. Imagine a two-week lookahead that updates itself based on what's happening in the field. Change orders, RFIs, and material delays that are automatically factored in, delivering real-time updates without hours of manual effort.

At its core, AI scheduling tools bridge the gap between the field and the office. They process daily reports, analyze patterns, and make logical timeline adjustments. The result? More accurate schedules with less effort, freeing you to focus on higher-priority tasks.

Getting Started with AI: Using ChatGPT for Basic Scheduling

Before building Mantic, I started experimenting with AI tools to ease my scheduling burden. Through plenty of trial and error, I've found some approaches that actually work.

If you're new to AI, ChatGPT is a great place to start. It's free to use, and while it's not a full-fledged scheduling platform, it's surprisingly effective for creating high-level schedules or brainstorming project timelines.

Step 1: Set Up Your Project Context

The secret to getting useful schedules from ChatGPT? Context and Structure. Start by giving it your scope of work, either as an uploaded file or you can copy and paste the text directly. Here's the prompt I use:

Step 2: Identify Critical Path

A note on AI models: these programs have a limited context window, which is essentially the amount of text they can take in to generate an output. As the conversation gets longer, the AI's accuracy degrades. To account for this, I like to copy and paste the response from step 1 into a new chat.

Once ChatGPT outputs your scope of work in a structured format, and you've copied the response into a new chat, you'll need to ask it to establish a timeline for the project and identify the critical path. For this step, it's important to explicilty direct the AI on how to structure it's output, paste the following prompt above your message:

Step 3: Generate the Schedule

Depending on the size of your project, you may need to start a new chat for this step just like we did for step 2. But for now, let's continue in the same chat.

The final prompt instructs the AI to generate a schedule based on the task list that is now ordered in a logicial sequence. If you have the paid version of ChatGPT, you can ask it to generate the schedule as an Excel file. If not, you can just copy and paste the response into a Excel Worksheet.

Why Construction-Specific AI Tools Are the Future

While ChatGPT is a great tool for creating high-level schedules, it's not a replacement for a construction-specific scheduling tool. Here's why:

• One Click Scheduling: Mantic allows you to create a schedule with a single click. No more laboring over spreadsheets.
• Automatic Updates: Changes in the field are automatically factored into the schedule, without any manual updates.
• Proactive Alerts: If a delay cascades across multiple tasks, the system flags it early, giving you time to address it before it snowballs.
• Real-Time Collaboration: AI integrates field and office data seamlessly, ensuring everyone stays on the same page.
• No Expensive Training Required: Mantic is designed for construction professionals, by construction professionals. You won't need to hire a expensive consultant to get your team up to speed.

With these tools, the days of spending hours on manual updates are over. Instead, you get actionable insights that empower you to make better decisions faster.

How to Start Your AI Journey

Getting started with AI doesn't mean overhauling your entire process overnight. Here's a practical approach:

1. Experiment with Free Tools: Use ChatGPT or similar tools to create draft schedules or brainstorm sequences.
2. Adopt Hybrid Solutions: Mantic has powerful integrations with with many of the leading construction management software platforms.
3. Explore Full AI Platforms: As you grow more comfortable, you can transition to Mantic's Project Managment platform, which not only automates schedule adjustments based on real-time data, but also provides a suite of tools to help you manage your projects more effectively.

At Mantic, our goal isn't to replace Project Managers, it's to equip them with better tools so they can focus on what they do best: managing projects and solving problems. We are building a platform that is as easy to use as Excel, but with the power of AI to automate all of your scheduling and project management tasks.

The Future of Construction Scheduling

AI is transforming how we work, but this is just the beginning. As tools become more advanced, we'll see even greater opportunities to optimize schedules, improve resource allocation, and prevent delays.

The next time you're staring at your schedule on a Sunday afternoon, ask yourself: How much time could I save if this process were automated? With AI, the answer is clear—and the future looks brighter than ever.

Learn More

Discover how Mantic can change the way you manage schedules: