Construction project management in Québec: the schedule that holds (2026)

CCQ holidays, two mandatory shutdowns, written change orders, budget gap: how to date a job in working days and see the overrun before the end.

A construction schedule almost always fails the same way: someone counts in calendar days. Four weeks of work starting July 6, 2026 does not end on August 3 — because in between, the entire industry shuts down from July 19 through August 1 inclusively. That is not a forecast, it is an obligation: every site covered by the construction decree is closed, and nobody makes those two weeks up.

This guide starts from what can be verified — the days nobody works in Québec, and what the Civil Code says when a client asks for a change — and arrives at a way of running a job that holds: break it down, date it in working days, write the changes down, and look at the gap before the end rather than after.

The days nobody works

The Commission de la construction du Québec publishes an industry calendar every year. It contains two things your own calendar does not know about: paid statutory holidays that are not the ones other sectors observe, and two mandatory shutdowns.

Add it up: a construction year in Québec is not 52 weeks minus your crew's vacation. It is ten statutory holidays and four weeks of full shutdown. A three-month job that crosses July loses two weeks that no amount of effort recovers — and the client remembers the date you gave them.

Break it down: one phase, one end date, one owner

A job is not planned as a single line reading “kitchen renovation — six weeks”. It is broken into phases, each with three things: a start, an end, and someone who owns it. Without all three it is not a phase, it is an intention.

Between phases there are dependencies: rough plumbing does not start before the frame is closed; drywall does not go in before the electrical inspection. The useful rule is simple — finish → start: phase B begins when phase A ends. Cleverer dependencies (start-to-start, partial overlap) exist in civil-engineering software; on an ordinary residential or commercial site they complicate more than they help.

A delay is counted in WORKING days, never in calendar days

This is where everything is decided. When framing runs three days late, the naive move is to push every following phase by three calendar days. On a Québec site, that lands a restart on a Saturday, on June 24, or in the middle of the summer shutdown — and the schedule lies from that line onward.

• Three days late on July 17, 2026 does not push to July 20: it pushes to August 5, because the site is closed in between.
• One day late on June 23 does not push to the 24th: it pushes to the 25th.
• And the slip propagates: every downstream phase moves by the same number of working days, not the same number of dates.

That is exactly what our schedule calculator does: you give it a start date and a number of working days, it returns the real end date and names the shutdowns it crossed. Free, no sign-up.

A change that is not written down is a change you pay for

The second schedule killer is not the calendar, it is the last-minute request. “While you're here, could you…”. And the Civil Code is far blunter about this than most contractors think.

In other words: on a fixed-price contract, extra work performed without a written agreement is work you gave away. Not because the client is acting in bad faith — because the default rule is that the price does not move. The only way to displace it is the agreement of the parties, and the agreement that can be proven is the one in writing.

A useful change order fits in four lines, and is signed before the work:

• what is added or removed, described the way the original estimate described it;
• the price of that change, with taxes shown as everywhere else;
• the effect on the schedule — “+4 working days”, not “a bit later”;
• the client's signature, before the first hour is worked.

The third line is the one people forget, and it is the most expensive: it turns a delay caused by the client into a documented delay. Without it, you are the one who is late on your own contract.

Watch the money during, not after

A job that overruns is not discovered at the end: it shows signs in the first third. You just have to look at the three numbers that matter, and not mix them up.

The question that reveals everything: “I have spent 60% of my budget — have I done 60% of the work?”. If you have spent 60% for 40% progress, your projection is not your budget: it is your budget divided by 0.40 times 0.60, a 50% overrun — and you know it at 40%, not at handover. That is the calculation our progress and budget tracker does, on your numbers.

What you write down, and why

Construction project management produces few documents, but the same ones every time. They are the ones that matter when somebody disputes — a client, a subcontractor, an authority.

• The daily report: who was on site, the weather, what advanced, what was blocked. Three minutes a day; it is the only proof of a delay caused by waiting on someone else.
• Signed change orders, in order, with their effect on the dates — see above.
• Work orders given to the crew, with their due date: what is not assigned does not get done.
• The end-of-work date, written down the day it happens. It starts strict legal deadlines for getting paid — explained in getting paid in Québec.

Where to start Monday

If you change only one thing this week, take the job you have under way and do this:

• break it into dated phases, each with a named owner;
• recompute the end dates in working days — the calculator does it in ten seconds, and you may discover the date you promised the client was already impossible;
• go back over the changes accepted since the start: how many are written and signed? Fix the ones that are not, now, rather than at the final invoice;
• for a single line item, compare the planned budget, the committed cost and the real progress.

Four actions, none of which requires software. They only require counting the right days and writing the right sentences down.

The BatiCore team

We build BatiCore, management software for Québec construction contractors — estimates, job sites, CCQ payroll, compliance. Our articles cite dated public sources; when a fact comes from a regulator or a competitor, we say which one and when. Spotted an error? Write to us, we fix it.