AI for Planning Engineers
AI workflows for Planning Engineers: accelerate programme narratives, delay analysis, lookahead schedules, and recovery programme documentation.
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7 AI workflows for Planning Engineers
How AI helps Planning Engineers
AI helps planning engineers most with the writing that goes round the programme: programme narratives, lookahead summaries, delay reports and recovery narratives. The programme itself still lives in your planning software. AI helps you explain it.
Give it an export of the activities, critical path, key dates and your notes, and it can draft a narrative setting out the sequence, assumptions and risks in plain English. It can also turn a lookahead into a summary the site team will actually read. What it can't do is plan the job. It doesn't understand logic, resources or site constraints the way a planner does, and it will happily describe a sequence that doesn't work.
Start with one document, such as the narrative for your next programme submission. Use a business account with data controls, because programmes and delay information are commercially sensitive. Check every date against the programme, and where entitlement is involved, check your contract and take advice.
Where AI helps most
- Programme narratives: drafts the narrative for a baseline or update, covering sequence, critical path, milestones, assumptions and risks.
- Lookahead summaries: turns a three or four week lookahead into a week-by-week summary of activities, resources and blockers.
- Delay analysis reports: structures each event with its cause, effect, supporting records and the method used, for the planner to complete.
- Recovery narratives: explains acceleration measures, the revised sequence and extra resources in plain English.
- Programme comparisons: summarises the differences between two programme exports, such as moved milestones and changed durations.
- Progress updates: turns site progress returns into a clear note of what's ahead, what's behind and why.
Where to be careful
- Logic and the critical path: AI can't tell you whether the logic is sound or the critical path is real. That comes from the planning software and the planner.
- Entitlement: delay reports and recovery narratives get read in claims. Don't let the tool decide who caused a delay, and watch the wording. Check your contract and take advice.
- Made-up dates: if a date or duration isn't in your data, it shouldn't be in the narrative. Check every figure against the programme.
- Delay methods: the SCL Delay and Disruption Protocol describes several methods. Which one suits your records and contract is a judgement for an experienced planner or delay expert, not the tool.
Frequently asked questions
- Can AI create a construction programme?
- Not one you can rely on. AI can suggest a typical sequence for a building type, which is handy as a checklist, but a programme needs logic, durations, resources and constraints that a planner builds in planning software. Use AI for the narrative and reporting around it.
- Can AI do a delay analysis?
- It can structure the report and organise the records, but it can't produce a reliable analysis on its own. For anything heading towards a claim or adjudication, use an experienced delay analyst. Check your contract and take advice.
- What should a programme narrative include?
- The sequence and phasing, critical path, key milestones, assumptions about resources, working hours and access, and the main risks. Under NEC4 the contract lists what the programme must show, and JCT jobs often set programme requirements in the contract documents, so check yours.
- Will AI replace planning engineers?
- Not with the tools available today. AI will speed up reporting and some data checks, which changes the job. But building a programme that works, defending it in a meeting and analysing delay still need a planner who understands construction.
- How do planners use AI?
- Mostly for writing and checking: narratives, lookahead summaries, delay and recovery reports, and comparing programme exports. Some planning software now has AI features for checking logic. Whatever the tool, the planner checks the output against the programme and the site.
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