Working around weather and the schedule

Working around weather and the schedule

On a nice rainy day like today, it brings up a great topic, the exterior work, and the schedule.

What happens when it rains? Will the paint be ok and other great questions?

At our company and any company that does exterior work that is weather dependent we have to watch the weather report days in advance, we want to make sure the surfaces are dry and clean number one and we also want to make sure we are applying the paint as per the manufacturer's direction.

Now with exterior painting we do have to dodge and work around the weather, we may have to start and stop during the same day, work later in the morning or end the day earlier. The painters are very skilled at this so when you wonder what they are doing there is always a plan, feel free to discuss it with them. We want to make sure the paint has "skinned" up and with products like Sherwin Wiliams Resilence we can paint closer to rain than ever before.

So now the bad part, there are only so many available hours to schedule in a day, week or month so when any job is pushed back due to weather it may mean ALL the jobs behind it are pushed back even if it is an interior project, this is because we have allowed a certain time to do each project, when one is moved that doesn't mean we can move that one and still begin the next on top of it, there wouldn't be a company around that could manage that.

Scheduling is a chaotic dance, always moving up or back and adjusting while trying to maintain the projects, the happiness of the client and keep the workers going. It is not a perfect science by any means and there are many many variables such as weather, call-offs from being sick or family issues they have to attend to the clients needing to change things. 

We all have to be flexible in this manner to have a great project, schedule things loosely and move things up when you can. It is always fun to call someone and say we have availability and can move things up. A client who won't be able to handle scheduling like this may have a tough time with any contractor and we like to know this ahead of time plus make sure they are well aware of this.

So the next time you see it raining outside know that there is a team inside the office scrambling to adjust things and make everyone as happy as can be.