Percent complete versus planned complete is the first schedule check that means anything, and only if both numbers are measuring the same thing.
Planned complete is the share of the job the baseline said would be done by today. Percent complete is the share that is actually done. The gap between them is the slip. A gap that holds steady can be managed. A gap that widens every week is the job falling behind in real time, even if the site looks busy.
The usual failure is how percent complete gets built. Hours burned are not progress. A crew can spend every budgeted hour and still be short of the units the schedule assumed: fixtures set, feet of pipe, devices installed, equipment hung. Cost incurred is not progress either. Buying the material early makes the job look further along than the installation is. A superintendent’s feel for “we’re about halfway” is not progress. It is a guess, and it tends to run hot until the back half of the job.
Physical percent complete has to be earned. Units installed against units required. Activities finished against activities planned. Milestones hit against milestones due. If the schedule says the third-floor rough-in is 40 percent of that phase, that 40 percent counts when the rough-in is in, not when the crew has been on the floor for 40 percent of the hours.
Planned complete has a matching problem. A baseline that was never real will make a healthy job look late, or a late job look fine. The comparison only works against the schedule you are actually trying to hit, including approved changes. An old baseline that ignores a major owner change will flag a variance that is not the field’s.
Read the gap by area, not only job-wide. A project at 52 percent complete against 54 percent planned can still be in trouble if the critical path is at 30 percent and the float work is carrying the average. The job-level number is the headline. The phase and trade numbers are the diagnosis.
Click Construction keeps the two figures tied to work that can be verified. Planned complete comes from the current schedule. Percent complete comes from installed units and finished activities, not from hours on a timesheet. The gap shows up against the tasks that are open, so a widening slip is a list of blocked work, not a percentage in a meeting. The person running the job is not left to decide, at the end of the week, whether the site “feels” on track. The planned number and the earned number are already in the same place, and the difference is either explained by a known constraint or it is the start of a recovery.