Baselines: the same project, executed exactly right, every time.
Most platforms hand every team the same checklist and call it standardization. That isn't standardization. That's a generic plan.
A new opening, a transition, a company-wide rollout — the project name repeats, but the work underneath inevitably has unique variations by location. The flagship resort has a full-service spa and specialty restaurant; the airport property doesn't. The franchise in a leased space skips the permitting steps whereas a greenfield construction doesn't.
Pacer's Baselines are built to command that variance, not ignore it.
One template. Every team gets only what's theirs.
A Baseline is the standard. Pacer decides which standards apply, and blends them into one list.
Every project starts with a core Baseline — the tasks every location owns, no exceptions. Every McDonald's needs a grill. But a project is never just the core. So you build Baselines for the scenarios layered on top of it: one for locations with a drive-thru, one for locations with a playground, one for whatever variation your business actually runs.
Tasks that aren't in-scope don't get ignored or marked N/A. They simply only appear for locations with those responsibilities.
Reduce administrative burdens and location team frustration with layered baselines.
When the project goes live, the PM doesn't reassign the standard — they select which Baselines apply to which locations. Pacer takes it from there, blending the core and every relevant scenario Baseline into a single task list, purpose-built for that location. Drive-thru tasks land on drive-thru locations. Playground tasks land where there's a playground. Nowhere else.
The standard doesn't bend. What changes is which standards are in play — and Pacer makes that call with precision, every time.
Generic templates can't tell the difference between "irrelevant" and "ignored."
A flat checklist treats every location like every other location. It can't see:
- Which tasks actually apply to a given location, role, or team — versus which ones are dead weight inherited from a template that was never built for them
- The dependency chain that determines whether a task can even start, regardless of what the calendar says
- When "Not Applicable" is being used correctly versus used to avoid a status update
- That the team doing onboarding for the fifth time needs a different sequence than the team doing it for the first
A pile of "Not Applicable" statuses isn't harmless. It's noise. It buries the work that matters, trains teams to stop reading their task list closely, and tells them — correctly — that no one in command built this for the rollout in front of them.
Pacer's Baselines were built for organizations running the same kind of project at scale, over and over, where the variance between locations isn't an exception to manage. It's the job.
Automate your project creation and task assignments.
Excel and generic PM tools can present task lists, but lack the ability to automate the assignment and accountability for those tasks.
Layered baselines in Pacer solve your pain points at the location, regional, and corporate level:
- Eliminate tasks that are "overdue" because they don't apply to the project or location
- Improve collaboration and accountability for location tasks
- Empower location teams to focus on work that is in-scope vs. scanning a spreadsheet for relevant tasks
- Standards of brand and governance are never neglected
Pacer was built for organizations managing openings, implementations, and transitions. Instead of dumping complex projects into platforms designed for general work, use a purpose-built solution that automates accountability for your teams using workflows.
Give every team a list that looks like it was built for them. Because it was.
A Baseline isn't a template you hope people follow. It's the standard, applied with command.
Every team opens their task list and sees exactly what's theirs — no scrolling past work that belongs to another department, no second-guessing whether a task applies to them. Less noise. More ownership. A team that trusts its list moves faster than a team that has to interrogate it first.
This is what it looks like when one organization runs hundreds of versions of the same project, and every single one runs to standard.