How Do You Write a Recovery Schedule?

A schedule update tells you the job is late. A recovery schedule says how it will catch up. Owners ask for one when the forecast completion passes the contract date, and contracts often give them the right to. Where the federal schedules clause applies, FAR 52.236-15(b) says that if the contractor "falls behind the approved schedule, the Contractor shall take steps necessary to improve its progress, including those that may be required by the Contracting Officer, without additional cost to the Government."

The Corps of Engineers' guide specification UFGS 01 32 01.00 10 spells out the plan: when progress falls behind "for reasons other than those that are excusable", the Contracting Officer "may require provision of a written recovery plan" that details "which activities will be accelerated by adding additional crews, longer work hours, extra workdays, etc." (§3.9). Private contracts usually have a similar clause; read yours before you price anything. (The general contractor's guide and the project lifecycle cover the rest of the construction phase.)

1. Measure the gap. From the latest update: the forecast completion, the contract completion, and the difference in working days on the critical path.
2. Name the cause. Weather, a late owner decision, a design change, a slow subcontractor or your own sequence. Excusable delay is a time extension request, not a recovery plan.
3. List the options activity by activity on the critical and near-critical path: a second crew, a Saturday shift, an earlier start for the next trade, a faster delivery, prefabrication.
4. Price each option and estimate the working days it recovers. Ask the subs for crew availability before you count on it.
5. Choose the set that closes the gap at the lowest cost, and put it in the schedule as real changes: new resources in the notes, changed links with their lags, extra workdays on the calendar.
6. Write the narrative: the gap, the cause, each change and its days, the cost and who carries it, and what the daily reports will show.

A fictional two-story office, Larchmont Commons. The April update forecasts substantial completion 8 working days after the contract date, all of it from a slow start on interior framing. The GC prices three options on the critical path.

Check the arithmetic: 6 workers × 8 hours × 4 Saturdays = 192 hours, and 192 × $30 = $5,760. Adding the freight, $5,760 + $2,400 = $8,160 for 4 + 3 + 1 = 8 days. The overlap is free in money but not in risk: the ceiling crew works behind the tapers in the same rooms, so the superintendent writes down the area handoffs before it starts.

It follows the cause. If the delay is the contractor's, the recovery is at its own cost: that is what "without additional cost to the Government" means in FAR 52.236-15. If the delay is excusable (owner changes, unusual weather, differing site conditions, depending on the contract), the remedy is usually a time extension, and an owner who wants the original date anyway is asking for acceleration it may have to pay for. When a subcontractor caused the slip, the GC passes the cost down under the subcontract, as in the example; see what a GC should do when a sub falls behind.

Failing to keep up has consequences on federal work: the guide spec says failure to follow the recovery plan "may result in an interim and final unsatisfactory performance rating" and corrective action under FAR 52.236-15 and the default clause, FAR 52.249-10 (§3.9.2).

In Conflo's schedule, save a named version of the late schedule before you change anything, with a note, so the pre-recovery plan stays on record and can be restored. Then make the changes as real edits: a start-to-start link with a 5-day lag, Saturday set as a working day in the project calendar while the shifts run (the calendar is project-wide, so every task counts Saturdays while it's set), the added crew in the task's notes. The baseline doesn't move, so each task's days late against it and the key dates strip show whether the recovery is working at the next update.

Conflo doesn't price the options or write the narrative; do that in the update you send the owner.

A recovery schedule is the plan for getting a late job back to its date: the gap, the cause, and the crews, hours and sequence changes that close it, each with its days and its cost.

Make every recovered day visible on site and in the daily reports. Days that only exist in the software come back as a later, bigger slip.

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1. UFGS 01 32 01.00 10, Project Schedule (August 2026), §3.9 Failure to Achieve Progress, §3.9.1, §3.9.2 and §3.9.3 — U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Whole Building Design Guide). Read October 22, 2026.
2. FAR 52.236-15, Schedules for Construction Contracts — Acquisition.gov (General Services Administration). Read October 22, 2026.
3. FAR 52.249-10, Default (Fixed-Price Construction) — Acquisition.gov (General Services Administration). Read October 22, 2026.