OnTrack Schedule Command
OnTrack Schedule Command gives small contractors a repeatable weekly system that shows exactly where the schedule is slipping, why, who owns it, and what it costs — early enough that resequencing fixes it instead of overtime.
Figures from the fictional Cedar Lane worked example in Chapter 21, written to illustrate the method. Not a record of real results and not a promise of outcomes.
In week four a supplier mentions they're "running a little behind." In week six a client is still thinking about a selection. In week eight the inspector can't come until Tuesday. Each is a normal week in construction. In week eleven somebody does the arithmetic and the project is fourteen days late — past the contract date, with a liquidated-damages clause attached to it.
Delays rarely come from one issue. Weather, materials, permitting, client decisions, inspections, subcontractor availability, payment timing and change orders interact and compound.
Figures above were supplied as research context for this product (Mobilization Funding 2025 Report) and are reproduced as provided. They have not been independently verified and are not a benchmark for your business.
Every one of these is answered with a checklist, a tracker field, a calculation or a ready-to-send template — not with general advice.
This is the cascade every contractor recognises. Managing it as "the HVAC is late" hides five of the six — and each of those five was a cheaper place to intervene than the last one.
OnTrack catches this at the Materials Tracker — 21 days before the handover is at risk, while resequencing still costs nothing and expedited freight still works.
Seven stages, run in order, once a week, on every active project. The order is the discipline — it stops you buying overtime for a problem you never verified, diagnosed, or costed.
Establish what should happen and when — frozen, dated, and matched to the contract, not to hope.
Monitor leading indicators, not lagging news. Sixteen categories, forty-plus warning signs, eight minutes a week.
Convert a signal into a fact. Primary evidence — a confirmation, a tracking number, a walk — not a reassurance.
Root cause plus the real schedule impact, expressed as a number of days at risk after float.
One named person, one verb, one date. A company name is not an owner and a topic is not an issue.
Twelve options, compared on cost and days saved before you choose. Overtime is rarely the winner.
Client, subcontractors, schedule, margin — updated the same day, in writing, using the templates.
30–45 minutes, same day, same time. Stages 2 to 7 repeat for the life of the job.
Delay cost accelerates. Ten days caught in week five might cost $9,500 to prevent; the same ten days caught in week eleven can cost $31,000 to recover. Early detection is the only variable that reliably reduces the cost of a delay.
The Delay Cost Estimator turns ten inputs into two numbers: your Estimated Daily Delay Cost and your Total Delay Exposure. Every recovery decision gets compared against them instead of against a feeling.
That's a weather report, not an issue. Every register line carries one person's name, one verb-based action and one date — plus what happens if the date passes. Read out loud at the end of every review.
Eighteen templates covering overdue client decisions, late deliveries, permits, inspections, weather, missed sub commitments, at-risk milestones, formal delay notice, recovery plans and revised programmes. Professional, factual, never accusatory.
Everything is ready to use the day you buy it. No software to install, no scheduling program required, no project-controls department needed.
Written specifically for businesses of roughly 1 to 50 employees, usable by an owner, project manager, superintendent, foreman or operations manager.
Purchase to closeout. Most of it is one 30-minute meeting a week.
Pick your most exposed active project. Extract the four contract numbers. Write down five real risks, assign each an owner and a date, list every dependency landing in 21 days, and book the weekly review.
Freeze a dated schedule matched to contract dates. Mark critical path and float. Turn every long-lead delivery date into an order-by date with a named owner.
Seven categories, 47 checks, before anyone sets foot on site. Anything unticked becomes line one of the risk register.
Sixteen categories of leading indicator. Anything that trips goes into the register with a category, an owner and a verify-by date — before you know whether it's real.
Thirteen questions in order. Trackers updated the day before, so the meeting is for decisions rather than data entry. Ends with a message list, not a discussion.
Five levels with written triggers. Critical-path float hits zero, so it's Level 4 — a fact, not an accusation, and it gets said a week earlier.
List the options, cost them, compare days saved, choose, record why. Then tell the client and the trades the same day using the templates.
Sort the delay log by cause and count the days. Two or three specific changes go into the next job's pre-mobilization checklist. That's where the compounding return lives.
Priced against what a single recovered day is worth on one job — not against what it took to build.
Instant download · PDF + editable DOCX · Trackers build in Excel or Google Sheets · 7-day money-back guarantee
The itemised values above are our own estimate of what each component is worth when bought separately. They are a pricing rationale, not a market quotation.
Eight categories: baseline and planning, risk identification, weekly review and diagnosis, recovery planning, client communication, subcontractor and supplier communication, documentation and closeout, and business-level analysis.
Baseline summary, pre-mobilization risk score, weekly command sheet, early-warning sweep, days-at-risk calculator, recovery comparison, delay cost estimator, promise-vs-performance log, client decision countdown and closeout review.
A $250,000 fit-out run through the whole system, week 1 to week 16 — the warning sign, the verification, the escalation, the recovery comparison, and how 12 days came back for $9,550 against a $37,260 exposure.
This is a new release. Rather than publish invented testimonials, we'd rather leave this space honest and fill it with real reader feedback.
Awaiting first reader review.
Awaiting first reader review.
Awaiting first reader review.
Ran it on a live job? Email sales@viralbydesign.co — we'd like to hear how it went.
It was built specifically for businesses of roughly 1 to 50 employees with no dedicated scheduler and no project-controls department. Everything runs on a spreadsheet, a printed checklist and 30 to 45 minutes a week. The only thing borrowed from large-project controls is the discipline of separating a delay event from its schedule impact — which costs nothing to apply and is where most of the value sits.
No. A spreadsheet is enough for the whole system, and on a job under about $2 million a wall of sticky notes photographed each week is a legitimate baseline. If you already use scheduling software, this sits on top of it — the software holds the dates, OnTrack is the weekly discipline that acts on them.
Yes. Residential work is where client-decision delays and long-lead finish items do the most damage, and the Client Dependency Tracker and Materials Tracker were written with that in mind. Remodelers and custom builders tend to get value fastest from the dependency-stream and client-communication chapters.
Yes. Run it on your own package: your baseline is your package programme, your client is the GC, and your dependencies are the preceding trades, your material orders and site access. The promise-vs-performance table works in reverse too — it's the clearest way to show a GC that your slippage came from a predecessor rather than your crew.
That's one of the two situations it was designed for. Start with the 60-minute quick start, then the recovery chapter (twelve options and the comparison table), then the client communication templates. You'll have a costed recovery plan and a sent client message within about two hours.
Yes, and they were laid out to be printed. The pre-mobilization checklist, the weekly command checklist, the early-warning sweep, the scorecard and all ten worksheets are designed to work on paper on a job site, which is where most of them will actually be filled in.
Yes. Every tracker is specified as a field list plus a status vocabulary, so it builds in either. Appendix B has all the field lists in one place plus the three formulas that do most of the work. Building the full workbook takes about 20 minutes.
No. It gives whoever is already doing the job — owner, PM, superintendent, foreman or operations manager — a repeatable structure so schedule control doesn't depend on one person's memory. If anything it makes it easier to hand a project between people, because the state of the job is written down rather than carried around.
No. It's an operational and project-management resource. Contractual rights, notice requirements and delay-claim entitlement depend entirely on your specific contract and jurisdiction. Where those matter, the book tells you what to record and when to speak to a qualified professional. The Delay Log is an operational recordkeeping tool, not a legal document, and sending a template does not by itself satisfy a contractual notice requirement.
No, and any product claiming otherwise is selling something it can't deliver. Weather, suppliers, authorities and client decisions aren't under your control. What this system improves is how early you detect a problem, how clearly you can see its real impact, who is accountable for it, and how much the recovery costs you.
The review runs once a week per active project — same day, same time — and takes 30 minutes if the trackers were updated the day before, plus 15 to 20 minutes afterwards for the messages that come out of it. The early-warning sweep takes eight minutes immediately before it, and documentation is about two minutes a day.
Yes, and that's where it earns its keep. One register, one set of trackers and one scorecard per project; the scorecards are then read side by side on a Monday. There's a three-scan routine that gets you across four jobs in under two minutes.
Yes. The five dependency streams are trade-neutral, and specialty contractors usually find the Materials Tracker and the Permit & Inspection Tracker do the heaviest lifting, since long-lead equipment and inspection queues are where trade packages most often lose days.
That's what the Client Dependency Tracker and the decision-reminder templates are for. The objective is never to build a case — it's to make the consequence of a date visible before the date passes, when the client can still act on it. Where a client-caused delay may have contractual consequences, document it contemporaneously and take advice.
You get the complete bundle as an instant download — the 121-page implementation guide as a PDF and an editable DOCX, containing the method, all eight tracker specifications, every checklist, all eighteen communication templates, the ten worksheets, the 60-prompt AI library and the worked example. Nothing to install, no subscription, no account to create.
Email sales@viralbydesign.co within 7 days of purchase for a full refund. No forms, no interrogation.
If the system isn't the right fit for how you run your jobs, request a full refund within 7 days of purchase — no complicated process, no hard feelings.
121 pages. The 7-point method. Eight trackers. Eighteen templates. Ten worksheets. A costed recovery playbook and a complete worked project. One payment, instant access.
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Important: OnTrack Schedule Command is an operational and project-management resource. It is not legal advice, and no professional relationship is created by its purchase or use.
Contractual rights and delay claims depend on the specific wording of your contract and the law of your jurisdiction. Whether a delay is excusable or compensable, and what notice must be given in what form and within what period, varies substantially between contract forms and between jurisdictions. The communication templates are drafting starting points and do not by themselves satisfy any contractual notice requirement. The Delay Log is an operational recordkeeping tool, not a legal document.
All calculations — including the Delay Cost Estimator, days-at-risk figures and recovery comparisons — are estimates derived from assumptions you supply. They are not certified cost assessments or a substitute for contractual or forensic delay analysis. Consult a qualified construction lawyer, accountant or claims professional in your jurisdiction regarding your own circumstances.
Market statistics shown on this page were supplied as context for this product (Mobilization Funding 2025 Report) and are reproduced as provided; they have not been independently verified. Case-study figures are fictional illustrations, not records of real projects and not a promise of outcomes. This product does not and cannot eliminate delays or guarantee on-time completion.