📖 How to use this template

A work breakdown structure splits a project into numbered levels until every item is small enough for one person to own and estimate. The sample is a building fit-out, numbered 1.1.1 down through 3.2.5, with budget, effort and dependencies filled in so you can see the machinery working before you replace it.

1. Duplicate this project into your own organization (dropdown next to the project name, then Duplicate)
2. Rename the three top sections, 1. Internal, 2. Foundation and 3. External, to your own level-1 groupings, then renumber the work beneath them
3. Fill in Budget and Effort on every leaf item. Parent rows are containers, so estimate the leaves and let the totals roll up.
4. Set Milestone on each item to say which gate it belongs to: Design, Construction, Inspection or Turnover
5. Link the sequence. Open a task and set its predecessor, then switch to Table view to check the chain reads in the order the work actually happens.

Risk is a formula, not something you fill in. It reads Budget and flags anything at $200 or above as High 🔴, everything else Low 🟢. Change the threshold by editing the formula on the field itself, not by typing over the value.

Effort is a percentage with colour bands built in: green under 30%, amber to 50%, orange to 80%, red above that. It answers "how loaded is this" rather than "how many hours", which is the question worth asking at breakdown time.

Two sublists cut across the tree. 🔴 High risk collects every leaf the Risk formula flags, which is the list to read before a budget review. 🏁 Turnover gate collects everything tagged to the Turnover milestone, which is the handover checklist. Both ship as fixed lists, so set a filter on each one to have it maintain itself.

Tasks also carry approval states, so a leaf can sit at awaiting, approved, rejected or changes-requested while the work itself is still To-do. Approval is about sign-off on the estimate. Status is about the work.

Two habits keep a WBS honest. Break down until a leaf has one assignee and one number, then stop, because a fourth level is usually a schedule pretending to be a breakdown. And renumber when you restructure, since the numbers are the only thing telling a reader how the pieces relate.