Most owners review a schedule update by skimming the dates and asking whether the finish moved. That misses the point. A schedule can show an on-time finish and still be quietly broken. Three checks — logic, float, and progress — tell you whether the update is credible before you build a decision on top of it.
Logic: is the network actually connected?
A surprising share of submitted schedules contain activities with missing predecessors or successors, open ends, and dangling logic. When the network is not fully tied together, the calculated finish date is meaningless — the software is reporting a number that the logic does not actually support.
Before anything else, check the proportion of activities with proper relationships, the count of open ends, and whether constraints are doing the work that logic should be doing. A schedule held together by hard constraints is telling you the contractor could not (or did not) build a real network.
Float: where is the slack hiding?
Total float is where schedules get gamed. Excessive negative float can signal an unrealistic constraint; suspiciously high positive float can signal logic that was loosened to relieve pressure on the critical path. Look at the float distribution, not just the critical path — the story is usually in the activities nobody is watching.
Progress: does the update reconcile with reality?
Compare claimed progress against the prior update and against what you know from the field. Activities that jump from 0% to near-complete in a single period, or that report progress while their predecessors have not started, are flags — not necessarily fraud, but always worth a question before the number flows into your reporting.
The point of all three checks is the same: an update should earn its place in your records, not be granted it. A platform can grade these automatically; a practitioner can defend the grade. Either way, the owner should never accept a schedule on faith.