Baseline Schedule

What a Baseline Schedule Is and Why It Gets Lost

A baseline schedule is the approved version of the project plan at the time of project commencement. It contains the planned start and finish dates for every activity, the dependency logic between activities, the resource assignments, and the overall project duration and milestones.

Once locked, the baseline doesn't change. Actual progress is tracked separately and compared against the baseline. The delta between baseline and actual tells you whether the project is ahead, behind, or on track - and by exactly how much.

The Indian Construction Baseline Problem

The concept is simple. The practice is where Indian construction teams consistently struggle.

A common pattern: a project starts with a well-built baseline in Primavera P6 or Microsoft Project. For the first 2-3 months, weekly reviews compare progress against baseline. Then delays accumulate - monsoon impact, material delivery issues, subcontractor mobilization delays. The gap between baseline and actual grows to 4-6 weeks.

At this point, one of two things happens. Either the team stops looking at the baseline (because the comparison is depressing), or the planner creates a "revised baseline" - essentially a new plan that absorbs the delays. The original baseline disappears from review meetings.

The problem with re-baselining: it erases accountability. If the original plan said 24 months and you re-baseline at month 8 to show 28 months, your reviews now show "on track against revised plan." The 4-month slip has been normalised. No one examines what caused it or how to recover.

Baseline vs. Current Schedule vs. Forecast

Effective schedule management maintains three views: the baseline (what was promised), the current schedule (what the latest plan says based on actual progress), and the forecast (what will likely happen given current trends).

The Autodesk-Deloitte Digital Transformation study (2024) found that Indian construction firms operate with an average of 8.7 different tools per project. When the baseline lives in one tool, progress is tracked in another, and forecasting is done in Excel, maintaining these three views becomes a manual data assembly exercise that nobody has time for.

The result: most Indian construction projects operate with only the current schedule - no baseline comparison and no data-driven forecasting. Leadership makes decisions based on what the planner's latest version shows, without context on how much that version has shifted from the original commitment.

RERA and Baseline Integrity

RERA compliance makes baseline management legally important. When a project is registered with a committed delivery date, that date is effectively the baseline's end date. Any deviation from that baseline needs explanation, documentation, and - if the delay crosses RERA thresholds - regulatory consequence.

Projects that maintain clear baseline records with documented reasons for variance have stronger positions in RERA compliance reviews. Projects that re-baseline without documentation create a trail that's hard to defend.