Site Mobilisation: Set Up Your Gantt Before Ground Breaks

What is site mobilisation and why does it need a plan?

Site mobilisation is the period between signing the contract and the day real construction work begins. It covers site access setup, temporary facilities, hoarding, permit confirmation, crew briefing, safety inductions, and verifying that first-week materials are ordered and on their way. Most contractors treat it informally, letting each item happen when someone remembers to chase it. That informality is why the first week of many builds quietly disappears without a foundation being poured or a wall going up. A mobilisation period that runs five days over plan pushes the entire finish date by five days before a single construction task bar has moved. Planning mobilisation on the Gantt, with real tasks and real owners, is the simplest way to close that gap before the project begins.

What tasks belong on a mobilisation Gantt?

A mobilisation phase on the Gantt should list every setup task that must be complete before construction can run. That typically means: site access confirmed and hoarding erected; building permits in hand and displayed on site; site office and welfare facilities ready; foreman and subcontractor crew schedules confirmed; long-lead materials ordered with firm delivery dates — structural steel, window frames, and specialty tiles are the usual suspects; and a pre-construction safety walk completed and documented. Each of these becomes its own task bar with a duration and an owner, not a bullet point in someone's email. When mobilisation tasks sit on the Gantt with dependencies linking them to the first construction tasks, any slip in preparation immediately shows its impact on the construction start date while there is still time to act.

How long should mobilisation take on a Thai residential project?

For a single house or a small townhouse row, five to seven working days is realistic if the contractor is organised. A common sequence runs like this: days one and two for site handover, hoarding, and site-office setup; day three for the pre-construction safety walk and permit display; day four for the full crew briefing; day five to confirm first-week material deliveries are booked. For a larger project — say a ten-unit residential development worth eight to twelve million baht — allow ten to fourteen working days and treat mobilisation as a mini-project with its own Gantt phase. The rule of thumb is that mobilisation should take no longer than five percent of the total construction programme. Beyond that, the setup itself has become a delay.

A worked example: Khun Somchai's five-day mobilisation in Lat Phrao

Khun Somchai won a contract to build four two-storey townhouses in Lat Phrao, valued at 4.8 million baht on a 22-week programme. Before breaking ground he opened SiteBoard and created a mobilisation phase with seven tasks: hoardings up by Monday close; permits confirmed and displayed by Tuesday; site office and welfare ready by Wednesday; full crew briefing Wednesday afternoon; rebar delivery confirmed for Friday; formwork materials on site by Friday. On Thursday he found the rebar supplier could not deliver until the following Monday. Because mobilisation was on the Gantt, he shifted the foundation task two working days forward immediately and notified the owner through the owner sharing link — no surprise call, no back-and-forth. The plan reflected reality before the first worker arrived on site.

How do you track mobilisation progress in the Gantt planning view?

Create the mobilisation phase as the first section of your project and add each setup task as a separate bar. Do not compress five days of work into a single bar called mobilisation — that hides the detail you need to catch a slip early. Link the first construction task to the last mobilisation task as a successor, so a slipping permit or late delivery automatically moves the construction start date in the plan rather than becoming a surprise on Monday. Ask the site supervisor to log each mobilisation task through the on-site progress updates feature the moment it is complete. A photo attached to the safety briefing task is evidence the induction happened; an unchecked item on a printed list is a guess that nobody can verify weeks later.

What should every foreman know before Day 1 of construction?

The mobilisation period is the right time for a proper pre-construction briefing, not a quick chat on the morning work starts. Cover the overall project sequence and which phase each trade owns; the daily progress update routine, showing foremen the update process so they know it from day one; the handoff protocol between trades, so nobody arrives at a space that is not ready; the escalation path for problems — who to call and how fast; and the owner-sharing arrangement, explaining that the owner can see progress on a live link and that photos are part of every daily update. A foreman who understands the system before day one runs the reporting habit from the start rather than needing three weeks of reminders from the office.

FAQ: Should mobilisation be a separate Gantt phase or merged into construction?

Keep it separate. Rolling mobilisation into the construction sequence makes the plan harder to read and allows setup work to drift without anyone noticing. A dedicated phase makes the logical dependency explicit: Day 1 of construction cannot start until the last mobilisation task is complete. It also makes the setup period visible through the owner sharing link. When the owner sees the permits-confirmed task and the crew-briefed task completing in the first week, they understand that the initial days are productive preparation, not waiting time. Owners who understand what mobilisation involves rarely push back on the timeline; owners who do not are usually the ones who expect to see a visible structure going up in week one.

FAQ: What if mobilisation runs over its planned dates?

Update the Gantt the day the overrun becomes clear, not at the end of the week. Identify which construction tasks are now affected and by how much, then contact the owner before they ask. A two-day mobilisation slip, explained calmly with a revised plan visible on the sharing link, is a manageable conversation. The same slip discovered at the first progress meeting three weeks in is a trust problem. In most cases a short mobilisation overrun can be recovered in the opening construction week by pre-positioning materials and keeping crews ready to move the moment each gate clears. The contractor who tracks mobilisation on the Gantt and acts on overruns immediately almost always recovers faster than one who runs setup informally and finds the first week has gone with nothing to show.

FAQ: Can the owner sharing link help during mobilisation, before construction starts?

Yes, and sharing it during mobilisation often sets the tone for the whole project relationship. When the owner sees mobilisation tasks completing on the live view in SiteBoard, they trust that the contractor is organised before ground has even broken. Watching the hoarding task, the permits task, and the crew briefing task move to complete on a visible Gantt signals professionalism before any concrete is poured. For owners on their first build, seeing setup tasks complete in order removes the anxiety of not knowing what is happening. A project that starts from visible, trackable preparation almost always stays calmer through the hard middle weeks when real decisions need to be made quickly.

Mobilisation as a template: the habit that compounds across projects

Contractors who plan mobilisation on the Gantt consistently report the same result after a few projects: they stop losing the first week. Once the sequence is established — site access, hoarding, permits, briefing, material confirmation — it becomes a reusable template. Copy the mobilisation phase into the next project and adjust the dates. Within three or four projects the setup runs almost automatically because every step is owned, dated, and tracked in the same place. In SiteBoard, the mobilisation phase is visible to the project manager from day one, foremen log completions through on-site progress updates as each task closes, and the owner watches through the sharing link. The project earns trust before the first bag of cement is mixed — and that trust makes every conversation easier from the concrete pour to handover.