For construction and trades
Construction scheduling on a Gantt chart your crew can follow
Schedule crews, deliveries and inspections on your real work week and holidays, so a three-day job never quietly lands on a day off. See which tasks set the handover date, and try a late delivery in simulation before you change the real plan.
Why small builders use it
A schedule for small builders and trade teams, not a training course
Big scheduling packages are built for planners who do nothing else. On a small job the person keeping the schedule is also pricing the next one, chasing suppliers and on site by seven. What you need is a schedule that is quick to build, easy to change and clear enough that the crew leads can read it on a phone.
Timeline Studio is a Gantt chart planner that runs in the browser on desktop, tablet and phone. You add tasks on the timeline, drag them into place, and connect the ones that have to happen in order. There is nothing to install and nothing to configure before you start.
Working-day scheduling
Schedule on the days your crews actually work
Every timeline has its own work week. Set the days your crews are on site, add your own shutdown days, and add national public holidays in one click for the US, UK, Germany, France, Canada, Poland or Ukraine.
Turn on “Skip days off when scheduling” and task lengths, dependency shifts and the critical path all count working days only. On a Monday-to-Friday week, a two-day job that starts on Friday finishes on Monday, not Saturday. Days off are shaded on the Gantt chart with holiday pills in the date header, and when you add a holiday Timeline Studio offers to shift the tasks it affects.
- Any work week, such as Monday to Saturday or Sunday to Thursday
- Public holidays in one click for seven countries
- Right-click any day to make it a day off
Dependencies and critical path
Get the sequence right, and see what sets the handover date
Footings before frame, frame before roof, rough-in before plasterboard. Draw a dependency from one task to the next and the arrow follows the work. When the frame runs two days long, everything that depends on it moves with it, on working days.
Switch on the critical path and Timeline Studio outlines the chain of tasks that sets your finish date. Those are the ones to watch. A slip anywhere else has slack to absorb it; a slip on the critical path moves handover.
- Dependency arrows between tasks
- Move a task and everything after it moves
- Critical path outlined on the chart
What-if simulation
Try a late delivery before it happens
The windows are two weeks late. The inspector can only come on Thursday. The client wants to add a deck. Switch on simulation mode and try it: drag dates, change durations and rearrange dependencies in a sandbox, and watch every dependent task move with the change.
If the new plan works, apply it. If it doesn't, exit, and the real schedule is exactly as it was. It is a quick way to answer “what does this do to the finish date?” before you pick up the phone.
- Changes stay in the sandbox until you apply them
- Dependent tasks move with every change
- Broken dependencies are flagged before you apply
Crews and workload
Know who is on which job, and who is overbooked
Give each task an assignee, a person or a crew, and an allocation from a few hours to full time. The workload panel shows a lane per assignee with their peak load each week and lists anyone booked over 100%. Overbooked tasks get a red badge on the timeline itself, so you can move work or bring in help while there is still time.
- An assignee and allocation on every task
- Weekly peak load for each person
- Over-100% warnings on the Gantt chart
Already have the schedule in MS Project or a spreadsheet?
Bring it with you. Timeline Studio imports MS Project XML files, CSV files and cells pasted from Excel or Google Sheets, and keeps the outline, links, assignees and dates. From MS Project, the work week and holidays come across too. Save an .mpp file as XML first, or an .xlsx file as CSV.
You match the columns, see a plain list of anything the import had to adjust, and fix names and dates before the timeline is created. Files are read in your browser. Imports take up to 1,000 rows and 2,000 links, which covers most residential and fit-out jobs.
It goes the other way too: export the schedule as an image for the client or the site office wall, or as a CSV file that opens in any spreadsheet.
One schedule for the office, the site and the client
Invite people by email with the right role. Site leads and subcontractors you trust can edit; the client or the architect can comment on the exact task they have a question about, or simply view. When someone only needs to look, a view-only public link does the job without an account.
Comments support @mentions with an email to the person mentioned, and each timeline has a chat for the whole team or one person at a time. Changes from others show up without a reload, so the person on site and the person in the office are looking at the same plan.
What Timeline Studio doesn't do
It is a planning and scheduling tool. It doesn't do estimating, cost tracking, timesheets, baselines or document control. If you need those, use it alongside the tools you already have for them, or choose a dedicated construction management suite.
Put your next job on a real schedule
Start blank, open the sample project, or bring an MS Project XML file or a spreadsheet you already have. Invite the crew leads when it looks right.
Free to start, with limited usage. Works in the browser on desktop, tablet and phone.