ScheduleForensics
Menu
Schedule Forensics Field guide

UDOT scheduling requirements: Section 00700, Schedule and Narrative

The Utah Department of Transportation states its scheduling requirement in Section 00700, "Schedule and Narrative", of the 2026 Standard Specifications for Road and Bridge Construction — twelve pages, structured as a submittals list followed by separate articles for the preliminary, baseline, streamlined and revised baseline schedules, the monthly update, the progress meeting and the early completion schedule. The signature sheet records approval for use on Department construction projects and inclusion in Department construction contracts from 1 January 2026, signed 29 April 2025.

Two things about the citation are worth stating before the requirements.

First, the section number. The specification index in the front matter prints 00700 CONTRACT AWARD AND EXECUTION and 00777 SCHEDULE AND NARRATIVE, which would point a reader at 00777. The index names are shifted against their numbers: the scheduling clause's own heading, its running footer on all twelve pages and the page numbering all read 00700, the section following it is 00725, and the revision date the index prints against 00700 — 17 June 2021 — is the same date the scheduling section's own footer carries. Section 00777 is Change Management, which 00700 cites as a related section and again for the early completion schedule. This page cites 00700.

Second, where the book lives. UDOT does not host the book on its own web domain; its standards page links the 2025, 2026 and 2027 editions as shared drive folders, and the file read for this page is the one the 2026 folder names as the official book. A 2027 edition also exists. Confirm the edition your contract incorporates rather than taking the newest.

What Section 00700 requires

Requirement What the 2026 Standard Specifications state Clause
Scheduling software The schedule is created using the current version of Oracle's Primavera P6 and the critical path method, unless the section allows otherwise. The streamlined tier is the exception: format is at the Contractor's discretion, and spreadsheet software is named as an option 1.7.C; 1.11.A
Submission format A colour PDF layout formatted to 11x17 landscape and the .xer Primavera file, with the table and Gantt views spanning the full project duration, the critical path shown in red, and the table columns in a fixed order: Activity ID, activity name, start date, finish date, original duration, total float, longest path 1.5.B
First submission One of a preliminary, baseline or streamlined baseline schedule and narrative ten calendar days before construction starts. The preliminary covers every activity planned in the project's first 60 days, starting at Notice to Proceed, showing the anticipated substantial completion date and projected major milestones, and no work progress 1.7.A.2; 1.5.A
Baseline deadline Where a preliminary was used, the baseline follows within 30 days after the start of construction 1.7.A.3
Disincentive $1,000 per week may be assessed where construction has started without one of the three schedule types submitted, and again where no baseline is submitted sixty days after the start of construction following a preliminary. A further disincentive of up to $1,000 per week runs from seven calendar days after the pay estimate closing date until a monthly update is submitted 1.7.B; 1.10.A.2
Agency review Ten calendar days for the preliminary and the baseline, seven for each resubmittal; seven calendar days for the streamlined schedule, then a meeting; seven days for a monthly update, five for each resubmittal 1.5
Update frequency Monthly until physical completion, due seven calendar days or less after the monthly partial pay estimate closes. The data date is one day after that closing date. Retained logic is used when progressing, verified in P6 before submission with no further changes afterwards 1.5.D; 1.10.B.6; 1.10.E
Look-ahead An updated four-week look-ahead each week, consistent with the current update, showing the previous week's activities and finish dates, work in progress, and the next four weeks, with a status or percent complete column, generated as an electronic bar chart 1.13.B
Narrative Required with every schedule type. See the section below 1.9.C; 1.10.F; 1.11.D
Revised schedule trigger A Revised Baseline on any major change to the work, with six examples given: significant changes in logic, activity durations or construction methods, or changes to the critical path; activities added, deleted or revised by change order; approval of a submitted Value Engineering Change Proposal; delays in milestones or project completion; phasing revisions; or the Engineer determining the schedule does not reflect the actual work 1.12.A
Time impact analysis Not present. No time impact analysis, fragnet or windows procedure appears anywhere in the book —
Float ownership Total float is a shared commodity between both parties and not for the exclusive use or financial benefit of either; either party has use of it until it is depleted. The Contractor must tell the Department when the Department's own consumption of total float costs the Contractor money — in sequencing, in the use of resources, or on any critical-path activity 1.4.R; 1.7.E
Early completion The gap between an early completion date and the substantial completion date the contract requires does not count as float. Additional compensation for Department-attributed delay may be due where the baseline shows the work planned to complete early 1.13.A (Early Completion Schedule)
Activity durations Maximum 21 calendar days for any activity unless the Engineer allows otherwise — a calendar-day cap, where the other specifications read for this site cap in workdays 1.9.B.9.a
Open ends Every activity carries at least one predecessor and one successor, excepting the start and finish milestones 1.9.B.12
Lags No negative lags 1.9.B.14
Constraints Not used unless required by contract or the Engineer determines them necessary; eliminated where possible by adding activities, relationships or calendars 1.9.B.13
Calendars Project calendars only — global calendars are not used. Each is named with the PIN followed by the calendar name, holidays included as non-working days, and calendars assigned consistently among similar activity types with similar limitations assumed at bid time 1.9.B.5
Activity type Construction-related activities are set to task dependent; resource-dependent activities are not used 1.9.B.20
Resource loading Required where resource limitations may affect prosecution of the work. A request for more contract time on the grounds of a resource shortage goes unconsidered where the baseline and the updates after it were not resource loaded. No levelling resource options when progressing 1.9.B.16
Non-default settings Primavera settings differing from the software defaults must be documented and explained 1.9.B.22
Float sequestering Not permitted through manipulating calendars, extending activity durations, or other methods 1.9.B.15

A narrative asked to explain, not to describe

The baseline narrative carries ten items, and most of them ask for a reason rather than a fact. The construction philosophy behind the approach, and the reasons for the work sequences. Justification for every activity whose duration exceeds 21 calendar days, for every use of a constraint and for every non-typical activity setting. A description of every unusual calendar. The basis on which relationships were applied — physical, chronological, crew or equipment driven, or limited by right of way, environmental conditions or third party utilities. How typical weather days were accounted for, and 1.9.C.5.a names a source to estimate them: the Daily Values at the Prism Climate Group website, reached through UDOT's standards references page. The critical path with the challenges it presents. Production rates for all activities. Subcontractor scope. And a statement that the baseline represents how the work was bid, or an explanation of how it differs.

The update narrative is structured the same way and points at a defined population: why every deviation sitting on the critical path, or under 20 days of float, happened, what it does or may do to the work, and what has been and will be done about it. Then the reasons for and impacts of every added or deleted activity, duration change, relationship change, constraint added or removed, project calendar change, change to the critical path, and revision to actual dates previously accepted — plus what the Department needs to do and by when.

One observation about reading such a narrative against a file. The population it must explain — activities under 20 days of float, plus whatever moved since the last authorized update — is derivable by comparing two exports, so the list of things needing an explanation is mechanical. Whether the explanations given hold is not, and this project does not treat it as such.

Settings the specification reaches into

Seven baseline requirements are properties of the Primavera file rather than of the plan: project-only calendars named with the PIN, no negative lags, no open ends, no constraints without a contractual basis, task-dependent activity types, no levelling when progressing, and retained logic on update. The eighth closes the gap — non-default settings must be documented and explained — turning an open-ended space of scheduling options into a disclosure duty.

Calendars are the item most often surprising in practice. A P6 export records the calendar type on the calendar record, so project versus global is decidable from the file, and the naming rule is too, given the PIN. The population that matters is the calendars activities are actually scheduled on: a reading over every calendar row would sweep in calendars nothing uses.

What this page does not tell you

See it in practice

Follow the evidence, from the schedule to the finding.

Explore the sample