Planning defines the work and resources needed; scheduling decides when that work will be performed with resources actually available. A calendar full of unready jobs is not a reliable plan. Excellent instructions that never receive an access window do not produce results either. The activities must communicate without being confused.
| Activity | Inputs | Expected output |
|---|---|---|
| Plan | Validated request, asset condition, documentation, safety constraints. | Defined work, steps, parts, skills, estimated duration, acceptance criteria. |
| Schedule | Ready work, available personnel, operations access, priority. | Feasible calendar and shared commitment to selected work. |
Define what ready work means
The package should identify the equipment, need and completion condition. Parts must be available or their arrival confirmed with a margin appropriate to risk. Tools, permits, skills and access constraints must be known. Competent owners validate safety procedures; a scheduling meeting does not replace them. Separate the total backlog from the ready-to-execute backlog.
A sample week to adapt to your operation
- Monday: review completed work, deferrals and field feedback; correct estimates and packages.
- Tuesday and Wednesday: prepare priority work, verify parts and confirm access constraints.
- Thursday: bring operations and maintenance together to compare ready work with next week’s actual capacity.
- Friday: confirm the schedule and communicate commitments, dependencies and deferral risks.
- Daily: briefly review new events without routinely rebuilding the entire schedule.
This is an organizational example, not a mandatory standard. A continuous-operation site or major shutdown will need a different rhythm. The weekly meeting should cover priority risks, capacity by trade, access, unready jobs and trade-offs. Finish with decisions, owners and conditions that permit changes.
Handle emergencies without normalizing interruptions
Define emergency criteria before pressure rises: immediate risk to people, the environment or a critical function, under site rules. When urgent work displaces another job, explicitly identify the deferral and obtain acceptance of the risk. Reserve capacity for uncertainty based on your history rather than a universal percentage. An insistent request is not automatically a technical emergency.
Measure without rewarding the wrong behaviours
Track completed work against the committed schedule, deferral reasons, interruptions and ready-backlog age. State whether compliance is measured by job count or hours: they tell different stories. In a fictional example, 8 completed jobs out of 10 means 80% by count, not necessarily 80% of hours. Do not inflate compliance by removing unfinished work from the reference schedule afterward.