Unscheduled and Amber-Flagged Tasks
What amber tasks are
Tasks that the AI could not confidently sequence receive a sequential fallback link — chained to the previous item in BOQ order — and are highlighted in amber on the Gantt. The amber colour is a signal: "this task's position was determined by BOQ order, not construction logic — review it."
Common causes of amber tasks:
- Single-item WBS sections: There is nothing to sequence against within the section, so the item has no intra-section predecessor. It receives a fallback link to preserve timeline continuity.
- Provisional sums and PC items: These are inherently ambiguous in scheduling terms. Their timing depends on employer decisions that the AI cannot know.
- General contractor overhead items: Mobilisation, preliminaries, and site management items often appear as amber because the AI correctly identifies them as candidates to run across the full project duration, but cannot determine their exact predecessor without more context.
- Project roots: Items the AI identified as the first activity in their section or in the project have no predecessor by definition. Some of these will appear amber because they have a fallback sequential link from BOQ-ordering logic, even though the AI's intent was for them to start at day zero.
- LLM response failures: If the LLM returned a malformed response for a particular section, all items in that section that were not linked by a prior iteration fall back to sequential ordering and are flagged amber.
Identifying amber tasks
- Amber task bars are rendered in orange rather than the normal blue or grey task colour on the Gantt.
- Hovering over an amber task shows a tooltip indicating that the AI link needs review.
- The AI Schedule modal progress panel displays a warning count when amber tasks exist after the run completes.
Fixing amber tasks
- Right-click the amber task bar in the Gantt and choose Edit task to open the Task Detail Panel, where you can search for and add a predecessor.
- Alternatively, hover over the task bar of the intended predecessor until the link handle (a small circle) appears at its right edge, then drag to the amber task.
- Once a user-set predecessor is assigned, the amber highlight clears on the next schedule refresh.
- With Protect my links turned on, subsequent AI re-runs skip this task — your manual fix is preserved.
Focus amber task review on items that fall on or near the critical path first. Amber tasks with generous total float are lower priority and can be reviewed after the critical path is confirmed.
Root tasks are not errors
Some amber tasks are genuine project roots — items that legitimately start on day zero, such as site mobilisation, bulk earthworks, or preliminary site establishment. If a task should start at the beginning of the project, leave the amber indicator as-is or assign a start constraint to pin it explicitly to the project start date. Adding an unnecessary predecessor to a true root task can create unintended chains and distort the critical path.