Free S-curve template · No signup
Planned vs actual cumulative progress, built from your labor hours — with % complete, period-by-period variance, and the manpower-loading histogram behind it.
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Field PM has this exact form built in — crews fill it out from a phone, the data flows into the project record, and you get a clean PDF for the GC or owner with one click. No re-typing, no lost paperwork, no missed signatures.
Paper / Excel
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An S-curve plots cumulative progress — hours, cost, or percent complete — against time. It earns its name from the shape: work accumulates slowly during mobilization, accelerates through the productive middle of the job, then tapers as the project closes out. Plotting planned and actual S-curves on the same axes shows at a glance whether you are ahead of or behind schedule.
Spread your total budgeted hours (or cost) across the schedule periods to get a per-period plan — that is the manpower-loading histogram. Then add each period to the one before it and divide by the total: the running cumulative percentage is your planned S-curve. This template does that math for you the moment you type the hours.
If the actual S-curve sits below the planned curve, you have completed less work than scheduled by that date — you are behind. Above the line means you are ahead. The Variance column shows the exact gap (actual % minus planned %) period by period, so you can quantify the slip, not just eyeball it.
They come from the same workbook. The S-curve is the cumulative view; the manpower-loading histogram is the per-period view. The same hours you enter drive both, so a change to the plan updates the histogram and the curve together.
The S-curve is the single chart owners and lenders look at to judge a project: cumulative progress over time, planned against actual. When the actual line dips below the plan, the job is behind — and the gap between the two curves is the story of the schedule.
Building one by hand means spreading hours across the schedule, running cumulative sums, and wrestling Excel's chart tools every time. This template does it for you: type planned and actual hours by period and the cumulative percentages, the curve, and a manpower-loading histogram all update live, with a variance column that flags ahead or behind at a glance.
A spreadsheet S-curve is only as current as the last time someone updated it. Field PM draws the S-curve automatically from field-reported hours and earned quantity — the same data behind the productivity (PI) calculator — so the forecast curve is always today's, not last month's.