Scheduling Subs

[Cole]

How many days in advance do you let your subs know when your job will be ready for them?

I try to give my subs a heads up a month in advance and then 2 weeks and 1 week and one day before.

[plunkinberry]

Wow. That sounds like a lot of advance notice. I've never been given a month's notice, but I generally don't work on BIG jobs...

[grumpydasmurf]

Typically I call them as soon as the job is sold, and ask they schedule. I then ask them to reserve the next available spot for me. It's usually a two weeks advance. I send them a work order with that date tentively scheduled. Then I call them about a half week before we are scheduled and make sure we are still on schedule.

When I work as a sub and a GC calls me to tell me something is coming up I call weekly to make sure things are still on schedule.

Because I was a scheduler for a year nothing pisses me off as much as schedule messups.

[Rich]

I've always done a schedule for the job - and update the subcontractors every month or week depending on the job duration. I personally don't think a month, week, day is all that bad... but I'm kind of like Grumpy - schedules are schedules.
Think of it this way - a job loses time one day at a time... so keep track of your days.

[Allan]

Really depends on the sub. Some of my subs I can call the 1-2 days in advance, some need 6 weeks. Just depends. I use a software called Buildsoft that has a schedule whereby Work Orders can be attached to the schedule that become reminders when to contact a particular sub based on hom much lead time I've told the program they need!

But really, it just depnds on the sub.

Allan