WisDOT CPM scheduling requirements: Standard Specifications §108.4.4.3
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation states its critical path method requirement in the body of its own Standard Specifications, at §108.4.4.3, "Initial CPM Progress Schedule". The current edition is the 2025 Standard Specifications, effective with the November 2024 letting. Because the requirement sits in the standard specification book every contract incorporates, there is no separate special provision to look for — though a given project's special provisions may still add to it.
The distinctive fact about this specification is what it does not say. Of the five agencies described on this site, WisDOT is the only one that mandates no scheduling software. §108.4.4.3 asks that the CPM schedule be developed using computerized scheduling software and that the Contractor identify the software used. Primavera P6 is not named in the specification.
What §108.4.4.3 requires
| Requirement | What the 2025 Standard Specifications state | Clause |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduling software | None mandated. Develop the CPM schedule using computerized scheduling software, and identify the software used. | §108.4.4.3 |
| Baseline schedule | The initial CPM progress schedule is due within 30 calendar days after the notice to proceed. | §108.4.4.3 |
| Update frequency | Monthly. | §108.4.4.3 |
| Narrative | Required, covering work days per week, holidays, shifts, hours, and adverse-weather days. | §108.4.4.3 |
| Recovery schedule trigger | Not established. A recovery-schedule requirement was not read in the material behind this page, and no day count or trigger is asserted here. | Not established |
| Time impact analysis | Not established. A TIA requirement was not read in the material behind this page. | Not established |
| Float ownership | Shared. Neither side owns it, and neither may take it for its own use or financial benefit. | §108.4.4.3 |
| Activity durations | One to 15 working days. | §108.4.4.3 |
| Relationships | All relationships finish-to-start. No leads and no lags. Constraints limited to contractual ones. | §108.4.4.3 |
Two of those rows say a requirement was not established. That is deliberate. The specification may well address recovery schedules and time impact analyses elsewhere in §108; what this page can say is that the reading behind it did not reach those clauses, and a guess dressed as a citation would be worse than the gap.
No software mandate, and what follows from it
A software mandate does more work in a specification than it looks like it does.
Where an agency names Primavera P6 and an .xer file, the agency also inherits
every setting P6 declares in that file — the scheduling mode, the float
definition, the critical-activity definition — and can write clauses about them,
as VDOT does with its seven named Schedule Options. Where no software is
mandated, those clauses have nothing to attach to: a schedule produced by
another tool declares different things, or declares them differently, or does
not declare them at all.
So WisDOT's requirement is stated against the schedule rather than against the tool. All relationships finish-to-start with no leads or lags is a property of the network, decidable whatever wrote it. One to 15 working days is a property of the activities. Float is a shared commodity is a statement about entitlement. None of them needs a particular application to be true.
One distinction this page keeps, and it matters. WisDOT's Southeast Region
update checklist does ask for an Oracle P6 .xer file. That is regional
practice, not the specification. The specification mandates no software, and a
regional checklist asking for a P6 export does not change what §108.4.4.3
requires of a project outside that region — or inside it, absent a contract
document saying so.
The Southeast Region review guidance, and who wrote it
Separately from the specification, WisDOT's AASHTOWare Project Knowledge Base carries SE Region Program Controls CPM review guidance, December 2023: a sample review-comments document and two checklists, one for the baseline and one for updates.
Two facts about it are worth stating before anyone relies on it.
- It is regional guidance, not a contract term. Every prohibition in it is a restatement of something else — of the project standard specification, or of the special provisions. Guidance does not breach. Where this project reports against that document it reports an observation and never a failure.
- It is authored by Gilbane Building Company, a private contractor, and published on a state agency knowledge base. That is stated because a reader who finds the document on an agency site will reasonably assume the agency wrote it.
The document is, for all that, unusually informative about how review actually happens. It partitions its comment library into "Technical Issues" (24 headings) and "Team Comments" (20 headings) — a split between what is mechanically detectable and what needs a person, made by a reviewing organisation about its own work. A separate reading in this repository classified all 44 headings against a stated criterion: 22 of the 24 Technical headings are decidable from the schedule file, against one of the 20 Team headings. Four of the Team headings carry no comments at all.
The interesting result is not the agreement but a disagreement. A duration cap with a stated number appears in the Team Comments — construction activities limited to a stated span — and a duration cap is the single most widely stated requirement in this whole family of documents, appearing in the Caltrans, VDOT, NYSDOT and WVDOH specifications described on this site. The comment library's own next bullet asks whether a particular three-day duration suits the quantity of work, and that is genuinely a question for a person. The split runs inside the heading rather than at it.
What this project checks against WisDOT, and what it does not
Sixteen of the 24 Technical Issues headings restate predicates this engine already decides under other authorities — open ends alone are decided under seven of them. Writing an eighth would print one defect twice in one report under two headings, which reads to a reviewer as two defects. What was written is the short list nothing else decides: that the contract's restricted holiday periods are non-working in every calendar; that the calendars agree with each other; that finish-to-start relationships carry no lag; that the project carries no Must Finish By constraint; and that interim completion milestones carry a finish constraint no later than the Special Provisions date.
Three headings could not be decided and are named rather than quietly dropped: constraint times of day, which this engine's whole-day time axis cannot see; the per-activity Expected Finish field, which it does not import; and the "bogus relationship" heading, which turns on a blank lag being distinguishable from a stated zero lag — a distinction erased when the file was read.
One requirement here contradicts another agency's outright. WisDOT's review guidance directs that the project Must Finish By constraint be removed. VDOT's Category III provision requires one and requires it to equal the Contract Completion Date. The same setting, on the same field of the same file, is called for by one agency and against by another. Neither is resolved here; the contract that governs a project decides.
What this page does not tell you
- It does not tell you which clauses govern your project. The incorporated contract documents — the edition of the standard specifications named in the contract, plus the special provisions — are what apply. An agency name alone does not establish which clauses govern, and a region's checklist is not a contract document unless the contract makes it one.
- Recovery schedule and time impact analysis requirements were not established. Treat both rows above as unread rather than absent.
- Regional guidance is marked as such throughout. Where this page mentions the SE Region material, it is describing guidance authored outside the agency and published by it.
- This project computes and reports; it does not decide submissions. It states what the imported schedule contains and checks it against the clauses cited. Excusability, entitlement, and whether a schedule is adequate are not questions it answers. The reviewing authority determines acceptance.
Related pages
- How state DOT scheduling specifications compare.
- UFGS scheduling requirements.
- Glossary — float, lead and lag, constraint, finish-to-start.
- What the engine does and limitations.
- The conformance rule catalogue and the standards map.
Source: web/pages/wisdot-scheduling.md. Source commit date: 2026-09-11.