[Brian]

The app assumes that anything set on a parent row applies to the child - if a project needs to be delayed until some future date, it's assumed that the actions need to as well. That's what you're seeing there...

Years of working on this app have kinda trained me to think the way it does, but if you describe the kind of view you're trying to create, we may be able to come up with an alternative approach.

Is the intent that the project can't start until some future date, but some of the actions it contains can be worked on immediately? If so, setting an earlier start date on those row(s) would be my suggestion. If both the action and the project have a start date assigned, the earlier of the two will be used.