Software · Project Scheduler

Construction planning software — CPM schedules in a browser

CivilOS Project Scheduler is free construction planning software that runs entirely in a web browser: you type activities, link them, and it computes early and late dates, total float and the critical path. It is built for the person who actually has to produce a programme — a site or planning engineer on a building, road, water supply or solar job, a small consultancy, or a contractor who needs a defensible bar chart for a client meeting on Thursday and does not have a scheduling licence.

Nothing is installed. Open the page, build the programme, export it to Excel or print it. The engine is ordinary deterministic arithmetic — no AI touches your dates.

What you can do

Feature	What it does	Export
WBS hierarchy	Indent and outdent to five levels; WBS codes number themselves and summary rows roll up their children	Excel · CSV · print
Dependencies	FS, SS, FF and SF typed the planner's way — `3`, `3FS+2`, `5SS-1` — with lead or lag	Excel · CSV
Work calendars	5-day, 6-day (Sunday off) or 7-day week, so every duration you type is working days	Excel · CSV · print
CPM pass	Forward and backward pass giving early and late dates, total float and the critical path	Excel · CSV · print
Baseline	Freeze the agreed dates, then read finish variance in working days as the job slips or recovers	Excel
Gantt chart	Day, week or month zoom; drag a bar to move it, its edge to change duration, its handle to link two activities	Print / PDF
Milestones & progress	Diamond milestones and a % complete column drawn as a tracking bar inside each activity	Excel · CSV · print
Resources & cost	A resource name and a cost per activity, rolled up through the WBS to a total	Excel · CSV
31 sector programmes	Ready activity lists — house, tower, school, hospital, mall, PEB shed, township, highway, flyover, metro, airport, water supply, STP, canal, dams, solar, substation, pipeline — as editable rows	Loads into the grid
Task Desk	Send activities to an engineer by WhatsApp or e-mail with a unique code; they report back without an account	Link
Save & reopen	JSON file save and load, plus a passcode cloud save that keeps a programme for seven idle days	JSON

How it fits an Indian construction workflow

Two things decide whether a programme is usable on an Indian site, and both are built in. The first is the six-day week: most sites work Monday to Saturday, so a 20-day activity is not 20 calendar days — set the calendar to 6-day and every date already accounts for it. The second is that departmental and contract programmes are read in working days of float, not percentages. When an executive engineer asks how much room is left on the piling, the answer is the total float column.

The cost column is deliberately plain, so it can be filled from wherever your money actually comes from. If you have already priced the work in CivilOS — a BOQ built against CPWD DSR 2023, a State PWD schedule of rates, or market rates — put the item value against the activity that executes it. The roll-up then gives a programme cost by WBS package, the shape a cash-flow forecast and an RA (running account) bill cycle both want.

The sector templates follow Indian construction sequences rather than a generic textbook: earthwork and PCC before footings, curing periods as their own activities, monsoon-sensitive work grouped so it can be shifted as a block, and statutory items such as approvals, NOCs and commissioning kept visible. Load one, delete what does not apply, and the starting programme takes minutes.

How to build a CPM programme, step by step

Open the Project Scheduler and set the project start date.
Choose the work calendar — 6-day is the usual Indian site default. Durations you type from here on are working days.
Load a sector programme close to your job, or start from an empty grid and type activities. Templates arrive as ordinary editable rows.
Build the WBS — indent child activities under their package. A row with children becomes a summary bar automatically and stops taking a duration of its own.
Enter durations and predecessors. Write links by row number: 7 for a plain finish-to-start, 7FS+3 to wait three days after it, 12SS to start alongside activity 12.
Read the critical path. Zero-float activities are flagged. If the finish date is unacceptable, shorten or overlap something on that chain — shortening anything else changes nothing.
Set the baseline once the programme is agreed. Every later export then carries baseline start, baseline finish and the variance.
Update % complete weekly and export to Excel, or print the Gantt as a PDF for the progress meeting.

What CivilOS does not do

No resource levelling or histogram. Costs and resource names roll up, but nothing detects or smooths over-allocation.
No earned value reporting. There is no SPI, CPI or earned-value S-curve; you get planned dates, actual % complete and baseline variance.
No XER or MPP import or export. Programmes move in and out as JSON, CSV, Excel or print — not in proprietary scheduling formats.
No 4D or 5D simulation. The programme does not drive the BIM Studio or Indo-Revit model; there is no animated build sequence.
No probabilistic risk analysis. There is no Monte Carlo simulation and no three-point (PERT) duration estimating.
No multi-user live editing of one programme. Team Workspace shares projects and read-only client links, but two planners cannot type into the same Gantt at the same instant.

Where a browser scheduler fits

Desktop and enterprise scheduling packages exist for good reasons. They are typically used where a programme must be contractually auditable across a portfolio — resource-levelled across shared crews and plant, tracked against earned value, exchanged in a specified file format, and defended in a delay claim years later. If your contract names a file format or requires levelled resource curves, that is what you need, and CivilOS does not pretend otherwise.

A great deal of construction planning never reaches that bar. A school block, a rural water supply scheme, an interior fit-out, a rooftop solar job: these need a correct critical path, honest float, a baseline, and a chart people can read in a meeting. That work is often done as a spreadsheet bar chart with no dependency logic at all, because the licence is not there. This tool sits in that gap — the CPM arithmetic done properly, in a browser, at no cost, in English, Hindi, Telugu or Tamil.

Frequently asked questions

Is this construction planning software free?
Yes. The Project Scheduler is free and runs in your browser with nothing to install. You can also install CivilOS as a PWA so it opens like an app. Only the optional AI assistant is subject to fair-use limits; the scheduling engine itself is plain arithmetic and never calls AI.

Does it actually calculate the critical path, or just draw a Gantt chart?
It runs a real critical path method pass. A forward pass gives early start and early finish, a backward pass gives late start and late finish, and the difference is total float. Activities with zero float are marked critical on the grid, on the Gantt chart and in the Excel export.

Can I import a Primavera XER file or an MS Project MPP file?
No. CivilOS does not read or write XER or MPP files. You can save and reload a programme as JSON, export it to Excel or CSV, and print it. If your client requires a file in a proprietary scheduling format, you will need the software that produces that format.

Does it support FS, SS, FF and SF links with lag?
Yes. Predecessors are typed the way a planner writes them: 3 means finish-to-start on activity 3, 3FS+2 adds two working days of lag, and 5SS-1 is a start-to-start with a one-day lead. All four relationship types are honoured by the forward and backward pass.

Can I export the programme to Excel?
Yes. The Excel export is a real programme sheet, not a CSV dump: it keeps the WBS indent, carries live cost roll-up formulas, and includes baseline start, baseline finish and the finish variance in working days alongside total float and the critical flag.

Does it do resource levelling or earned value analysis?
No. You can put a resource name and a cost against each activity and the costs roll up to a total, but there is no resource histogram, no automatic levelling of over-allocation, and no earned value reporting such as SPI or CPI. Those remain the job of a dedicated enterprise scheduling package.

Do I need to install anything or create an account?
No installation and no account are needed to build and export a programme. Your work stays in the browser. An optional passcode cloud save keeps a programme for seven days, and Task Desk lets you send activities to site engineers who do not need accounts either — they open their tasks with a unique code.

Open the Project Scheduler free → CPM, critical path, baseline, Excel export

Draft for checking. A programme is only as good as its durations and its logic. Verify both against site conditions, approved drawings and the contract programme before you issue it.