Your planner has left, or gone on long-term leave, or was never there in the first place and the programme is now due. You have three realistic options: recruit, engage a contract planner, or buy planning as a service. They look similar on a spreadsheet and behave very differently in practice.
The short version: recruit if the need is permanent and you can wait. Engage a contractor if you want a body in a seat and you already have a planning manager to direct them. Buy it as a service if you need the output rather than the headcount, or if there's nobody left in the business who can check the work.
What the gap actually is
Before choosing, be honest about what's missing, because the three options solve different problems.
Sometimes the gap is hours. The work is understood, someone just has to do it. Updates, progress collection, reporting.
Sometimes the gap is judgement. Nobody left can decide whether the logic is right, whether the critical path is real, or whether a compensation event has been assessed properly.
Sometimes the gap is accountability. The programme is going to be tested by a client, a main contractor or eventually a tribunal, and somebody has to be able to stand behind it.
An hours gap is the easiest and cheapest to fill. A judgement gap filled with hours produces a tidy programme that's wrong. That's the mistake worth avoiding.
Option one: recruit
Right when the need is permanent and the pipeline supports it.
The catch is time. A senior planner search, notice period included, is a slow process, and senior planners are not quickly found. If the programme is due before the person can start, recruitment isn't a solution to this problem; it's a solution to next year's.
There's also the quiet cost of a single hire: they take holiday, they get ill, and while they're away you're back where you started.
Option two: a contract planner
Fast, flexible and familiar. You engage an individual, usually through an agency, and they sit with your team for a defined period.
It works well when you have someone senior who can direct and check them. It works badly when you don't, because you've bought hours without buying judgement, and nobody in the building can tell whether the output is good.
Three things to price in beyond the rate:
Direction. Somebody has to tell them what good looks like on your job.
Continuity. When the contract ends, the knowledge goes. So does the file structure they invented, unless you specified one.
Status determination. Since April 2021, medium and large private-sector clients have been responsible for determining employment status for tax where they engage a worker through an intermediary. A fully contracted-out service is assessed on a different basis. This is an administrative reality of the contractor route rather than an argument against it, and you should take your own advice on how it applies to you.
Option three: buy planning as a service
Interim or retained, depending on shape.
Interim is project-length or gap cover: a named planner embedded on your programme, working to your reporting cycle, for as long as the gap lasts.
Retained is ongoing part-time support: a defined number of days a month, which suits a smaller contractor who needs a planning function but not a planning department.
The practical differences from a contractor are these.
You're buying a deliverable, not a seat. Scope is normally agreed in writing before work starts, which means the argument about what's included happens at the beginning rather than at the end.
Absence cover sits with the supplier. A firm with more than one planner can cover holiday and illness without the programme stopping.
The work gets checked. Senior review of the logic is built into how the work is run, rather than being a favour.
The tooling comes with it. If you don't hold a P6 licence, you don't need to buy one to get a P6 programme, which matters more than it sounds for a subcontractor being asked to submit in a tool they've never owned.
The trade-off is honest: you're not getting somebody who sits in your office five days a week absorbing corridor knowledge. For a lot of programmes that matters. For a lot of others it doesn't, because the planning work is deliverable-shaped anyway.
A short test
Four questions. Answer them before you approach anybody.
1. Who will check the work? If the answer is nobody, don't buy hours. Buy a service that includes review.
2. Is the deliverable definable? If you can write down what has to exist by when, a fixed-scope engagement is easier to price and to programme than an open-ended one. If you can't, that's worth knowing too, and a short scoping conversation usually fixes it.
3. What happens in month four? If the programme needs updating every period after the immediate crisis is over, you want an arrangement that continues. Solving the crisis and then losing the planner is how the same crisis returns.
4. Who has to accept it? A programme going to an NEC Project Manager for acceptance is a different job from an internal one. If clause 31 acceptance is the test, say so up front, because it changes how the programme is built rather than how it's presented.
What to specify when you buy
Whichever route you choose, write these down:
- the deliverable, by name, and the date it's due
- the tool, the version, and who holds the licence
- the structure: WBS, activity coding, calendars, or the client specification they must conform to
- the reporting cycle and the data date
- who accepts the work, and against what criteria
- what happens to the file, the layouts and the logic when the engagement ends
- cover arrangements for absence
Those last two are the most commonly left unwritten, and the most common source of argument later.
Talk it through
If you're not sure which of the three routes fits, a short conversation will usually settle it, and it costs nothing. Book a free consultation and bring the programme, the deadline and the name of whoever has to accept it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does an interim P6 planner actually do?
Builds or rebuilds the baseline, runs the monthly update cycle, produces the progress narrative and reports, handles programme submissions, and supports compensation events and delay assessment. On an NEC job that means a clause 31 compliant baseline and clause 32 revisions each period. Our interim and retained P6 planning page sets out the scope in full.
Can we get one for a single project?
Yes. Project-length engagements are the common case, and the scope is agreed in writing before the work starts.
Do we need our own Primavera P6 licence?
Not necessarily. Planned can hold the programme under its own licence and issue the file in the formats clients normally ask for. Confirm the required format at scoping.
Is an interim planner the same as a contractor from an agency?
No. An agency supplies a person and you manage them. A service supplies a defined output, with review, cover and a written scope. Some projects genuinely want the first of those. Know which one you're buying.
How quickly can somebody start?
Usually well inside a recruitment timeline. It depends on the month and the scope, which is what a scoping call is for.
We think the programme we already have might be the real problem.
It often is. Before you fill the gap, it's worth knowing whether you're inheriting a sound programme or a broken one. Our free schedule health check will score it in a few minutes, and an independent schedule assurance review goes further where the answer matters.