Analyse Program Variance

Background

When you work in a Lookahead, you are managing a granular field plan that lives "on top" of the master program. To ensure the field team stays aligned with the project's overall goals, Procore uses Shadow Bars. These allow you to see the original master program dates behind your active field tasks, making it immediately obvious if your current plan is deviating from the master timeline.

Things to Consider

Colour Logic:
- Colourful Bars: Represent your active field plan (the lookahead tasks).
- Light Grey Shadow Bars: Represent the dates currently set in the Master Program.
Dynamic Updates: If the Master Program is re-imported (Option 1) or edited, the grey shadow bars will shift automatically, while your colourful field bars remain in place for comparison.

Steps

Enable Variance Visibility

Navigate to the Lookahead tab.
Ensure you have "fetched" activities from the Master Program.
Look at the Gantt chart. Each activity will display two bars: the editable Colourful Bar and the Light Grey Shadow Bar underneath it.

Interpret the Variance

Observe the alignment between the two bars:

Aligned: The field team is working exactly according to the master program.
Colourful Bar is to the Right: The field plan is slipping (starting or finishing later than the master program).
Colourful Bar is to the Left: The field team is ahead of program (finishing earlier than the master program).
Extended Bar: If the colourful bar is longer than the shadow bar, the task duration in the field is taking longer than originally estimated.

Analyse Deadline Variance (Optional)

If you have set hard deadlines on your activities:

Locate the Deadline Variance column in the grid.
A positive number indicates the number of days the current finish date has slipped past the locked deadline.
Use the Filter icon on this column to show values "Greater than 0" to quickly see all late tasks.