A BETTER PAINTING SCHEDULE

If you have ever grappled with painting schedules you realize just how complicated this seemingly simple topic can be. What gets painted? Who paints it? Exceptions. Do you need a primer? Do you want any special preparation of the surface? How many coats do you want / can afford? What kind of paint? What gloss?

Oh yeah, what color!

In a small project of just thirty spaces there could easily be 3,500 surfaces to paint. It is a challenge to keep it straight and to not overlook anything.

THAT IS WHERE THE BETTER PAINTING SCHEDULE COMES IN

A Better Painting Schedule

A really thorough painting schedule holds out the promise of “just one last time” - if only technology would just stand still for a minute.

The typical process looks like this. 

• Familiarize yourself with the scope of painting
  
• Describe what gets painted and by whom, the painter or other trades whose work is involved
  
• Decide on what paint systems you need
  
• Customize the painting schedule to match your decisions
  
• Customize the paint specs to match your decisions
  

A spec-writing program like SpecLink+ or developing a master specification can make this process quicker, but it is always tedious.

My preferred solution is to create a master painting schedule like you see above and a master generic master painting spec to go along with it. One of the nightmares with painting is finding the equivalent products of three manufacturers (public work). There is a simple solution. Don’t do it. Settle on one company, say Sherwin-Williams, list their products and allow equivalent products by other manufacturers. Name those other manufacturers to keep out the riffraff. Require the painting contractor to prove equivalence. For reference here is S-W’s website with paint systems. 

So my system looks like this.

• Familiarize yourself with the scope of painting
  
• Find the master painting spec, which describes what gets painted and by whom
  
• Delete the paint systems that you don’t need from the Painting Schedule
  
• Take a break, you deserve it
  

The Painting Schedule is a breeze; the painting spec is a breeze; and, best of all, you have spent an appropriate amount of time covering this part of the project.

Now, ‘picking colors’ is another topic all together. But I’ve got you covered on that, too. 

The one disadvantage to my Painting Schedule solution is that you can’t do this in steps. It’s an “All In” proposition. Take a little more effort this one last time and from then on enjoy the benefits. Since you must be using something now, this one last time won’t really take that much extra effort. There are other topics that lend themselves to scheduling like this. See this article on Schedules.

It took a long time to overcome my early training in public school projects to realize that often there are more appropriate solutions than the ones that I learned as a rookie. This is one of them. Hope it helps you to streamline your processes.

I touched on this topic before - Schedules 

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