Welcome to Softdrill NL Lookahead

Welcome to Softdrill NL Lookahead, a program to setup and maintain a project schedule and related equipment and personnel movements. It was inspired by the well known spreadsheet but adds multiple features to facilitate input and making changes to maintain the schedule and logistics planning (equipment and personnel).

A schedule is based on planned operations that may be adjusted based on new insights and/or actual duration. The start time of each operation is automatically (re-)calculated after each update. Depending on the defined working times, the calculation results will be different.

The resulting Lookahead Schedule is shown on top of the Logistics tab. Below it are input grids for to be sent to to the location and equipment to be returned from the location, as well as planned crew changes. Note that schedule appearance can be customized via Colors & Fonts in the File menu.

A variety of functionalities makes it easy to work with Lookahead:

•Move multiple Operations by selecting them and then drag them with the mouse to a new position in the sequence. Dragging them whilst holding the Shift key will copy the selected operations into the new position.

•Define working hours and/or non-working days and recalculate the schedule accordingly.

•Tag certain operations as 'no split'. On restricted a work schedule (e.g. working from-to or with non-working days) such an operations is pushed in its entirety to the next available day and time if insufficient hours remain in the schedule to complete the entire task.

•Tag certain (key) operations as Milestone. Filter the Operations table for Milestone only and print a quick (high-level) overview of the project schedule.

•Tag some operations as Contingency. These operations will be excluded from the schedule calculation but may be quickly included in the schedule calculation if they become required.

•Copy & paste operations from a spreadsheet or text file.

•Move Equipment or Crew Changes by a number of days. Optionally move or subsequent (or prior) as well. Very useful in case of a delay in the schedule and all Equipment movements and crew changes have to be postponed (or done earlier if the schedule is much quicker than initially foreseen).