How to Easily Create a Matrix Schedule

matrix schedules

When I started at Gehry Partners in 2005, one of my first tasks was updating a drawing index. The project I was working on was a big mixed-use project. When I say big, I mean REALLY big. This project included a subway station, some retail, a basketball arena, and lots of housing. Suffice to say, there were a lot of sheets in the drawing index.

The drawing index was in an Excel file. When I opened the file, I let out a loud “What the. . . .”

The person sitting next to me, no doubt perturbed to be babysitting the new guy, raised an eyebrow and asked “Everything OK?”

“Um. . . what’s going on with this drawing index?”

“What do you mean?” he asked with a knowing grin.

“I mean, there are all these circles and dots. . .”

“Oh, that.” He turned toward me and put on his best professorial face. “It’s a matrix schedule.  The rows represent the sheets. There’s a column for each time we issued the drawings. If the sheet has a filled dot, it was officially issued. If it has an open circle,…

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