How do you track small contractor jobs within larger project plans?

WebbyKyle

Hi everyone,

I’ve been building out a few project plans in Smartsheet for some upcoming property updates, and one thing I’m not sure how to handle cleanly is tracking small, independent contractor work like when we bring in a concrete contractor or a local crew for a quick 2-3 day job.

These smaller jobs aren’t full sub-projects, but they still need scheduling, tracking, and sometimes dependencies based on weather or prep work. I’m wondering how others handle this without cluttering up the main timeline too much.

Do you usually build them into the master plan as separate tasks, or do you track that sort of thing on a linked sheet?

Thanks for any suggestions!

Matt Lynn ACT

@WebbyKyle This is a person by person opinion situation. Both options have various ways of working. My personal opinion/style is that if it has to do with the "project" it should be in the same plan. Those items would be child/demoted rows of the main parent task/row. Their dates/success impact the parent thus they are the parent. Yes you could link from other sheets, but it's more setup and with hierarchy you just collapse it if you don't want to see it. But I don't think one way is right or wrong, just personal preference. If there's a need for separations, I'd rather have a master that has everything and split with reports over having multiple that combines into one.