A fit-out job is not a list of tasks, it is a chain. Hang the wrong task off the wrong neighbour and the job finishes late even though nobody was slow.
The skill is not in writing the list. It is in seeing which task blocks which, and knowing which of those blocks actually matters.
What depends on what
Most dependencies on a fit-out are obvious once you say them out loud. You cannot fix marble that has not arrived. You cannot hang a door into a frame that is not set. You cannot second-fix electrics into a wall that is not boarded and skimmed.
-
Find the fixed lead times
Joinery, marble, lifts, specialist glass — anything made off-site to order has a clock that starts the day you place it, not the day you need it. A villa joinery package can run six to ten weeks from order to delivery.
-
Walk the finishes backwards
The last trade on site is usually the decorator or the final clean. Ask what each trade needs to be finished before it can start, and keep walking backwards until you reach demolition.
-
Mark the hand-off points
Every place where one trade cannot start until another finishes is a dependency. Those are the joints that move the programme when they slip.
A dependency you have not named is a future surprise. A dependency you have named is just a date.
A joinery package, run through it
Picture a private villa reception. The joinery — wardrobes, feature panel, media unit — is a long-lead item. Place the order at week 4, it lands on site at week 12. Between those two dates nothing visible happens, but the whole downstream sequence is hanging off that delivery date.
| Week | What happens | What it depends on |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | Joinery order placed | Approved shop drawings signed by the client |
| 4–11 | Joinery manufactured off-site | Nothing on your site — but everything downstream waits on it |
| 12 | Joinery delivered to site | Access cleared, lift available, storage dry |
| 12–13 | First-fix adjustments, scribing, fixing | Walls plastered true and dry; flooring in |
| 14 | Decorator’s final coat over the joinery | Joinery fixed and snagged |
Read the table top to bottom and it looks tidy. The danger is in the gaps. The week-12 delivery only happens because the shop drawings were signed at week 4; sign them at week 6 and the joinery lands at week 14, and the decorator — who was booked for week 14 on another job — is suddenly not there.
Late, and late-in-a-way-that-matters
This is the idea that separates a foreman who panics about everything from one who protects the job. Not every delay is equal.
Some tasks have float — slack between when they could start and when they must finish to avoid pushing the next trade. The decorators finishing a bedroom that will not be handed over for a fortnight have float. If they lose a day to dust from the joiner next door, nobody downstream feels it.
Other tasks have no float at all. They sit on the critical path, which is simply the longest chain of dependent tasks through the job. Slip one of those by a day and the handover moves by a day, because there is no slack anywhere along the chain to absorb it.
You do not need software to see this. You need the habit of asking, of every slipping task, two questions: what does this block, and is there slack between them? If the answer to the second is “none”, that is the task that owns your handover date.
How float quietly disappears
Float is not permanent. It exists today, and a week of small slips will eat it without announcement.
The joinery was due at week 12 with a week of slack before fixing. The drawings went out two days late. The factory had a power cut. The delivery lorry was delayed at the gate. None of these is a crisis on its own. Together they have turned a week of slack into a week of deficit, and now the handover is moving.
This is why float is tracked, not assumed. The moment a long-lead item is placed, the slack between its promised delivery and its first downstream use is a number you watch. When it drops toward zero, that chain has become the critical path.
What this looks like in Taskity
Tasks carry links that say “this cannot start until that finishes”, and a job view shows you which chain currently has no slack. The critical path is not a separate plan you draw — it is the longest dependent chain the software can see from the links you already created.
Check what you learned
1. The marble supplier delivers a week late, but the marble fixing was always due to start two weeks after that delivery. What is the effect on the handover date?
Show the answer
The handover is unchanged, because the fixing still has the week of float it always had
A delay only bites the handover when it hits a chain with no float. Here the fixing was scheduled to start two weeks after delivery, so there was a week of slack between "marble on site" and "first piece fixed". The week is absorbed and the handover holds. Had the delay been two weeks instead of one, every day beyond the float would move the handover a day — and that is where the late delivery would matter.
2. Which of these is the clearest sign that a task sits on the critical path?
Show the answer
Any slip in it moves the handover date by the same amount
Cost, attention, and specialism tell you nothing about sequence. The critical path is defined by float, not by money or noise. A task is on it when it has zero slack — meaning the moment it runs a day longer, the whole job runs a day longer. That is the only honest test, and it is why the expensive, loud tasks are sometimes the wrong ones to chase.
Scored quizzes, progress tracking and certificates live inside Taskity.
Next: Working in short cycles, and agreeing what done means →