Entry Point for Construction Planners

This entry point is for project managers and planners in construction projects: building construction, civil engineering, plant construction, infrastructure, and related areas. Rillsoft Project supports the requirements of these industries: trades, capacity balancing, machinery planning, and long-term schedule control.

Typical Tasks in Construction Planning

  • build a construction schedule by trades or phases

  • link tasks with duration, waiting times, and overlaps

  • plan equipment, devices, and machinery and detect conflicts

  • check capacity utilization of subcontractors and internal staff

  • keep critical path and float visible in daily work

  • document dates for customers and authorities

  • save a baseline for target/actual comparison and report progress

Typical Working Path

1. Build project structure by trade

Structure the project into subprojects by trade, for example shell construction, roof, heating, electrical, and interior work. Each trade receives its own level with the related tasks.

2. Link tasks with waiting times and overlaps

Many construction tasks have real waiting times, for example concrete curing or screed drying. Use positive lag in finish-start dependencies. For overlaps, for example interior work starts while shell construction is still running, use negative lag.

3. Assign equipment, devices, and machinery

Crane, concrete mixer, excavator, or scaffolding are resources with limited availability. Create them as equipment, device, or machinery in the resource pool and assign them to tasks.

4. Perform capacity balancing

Check whether employee and equipment capacities are sufficient. Overloads become visible in resource views. Rillsoft Project can resolve overloads automatically through optimization, or you can move tasks manually.

5. Monitor the critical path

In construction projects, the critical path often shifts, for example when material deliveries are delayed or weather blocks external work. Check the critical path after every planning change.

6. Baseline and progress report

Save the baseline before construction starts. Record progress weekly, for example percent complete and actual effort, and compare it with the baseline.

Important Views for Construction Planners

View

Use

Gantt chart

Daily work: tasks, bars, dependencies, critical path

Equipment utilization

Equipment and machine capacity over time

Employee utilization

Utilization of trade workers and subcontractors

Network diagram

Check process logic, especially for complex dependencies

Portfolio bar chart

Overview of all active construction projects in the company

Information panel

Overdue tasks, consistency checks, external documents such as plans and permits

Typical Decisions

Situation

Recommendation

Concrete task needs three days curing time

Finish-start dependency with lag +3 days.

Interior work starts while shell construction still runs for ten days

Finish-start dependency with lag -10 days.

Crane is needed for two parallel tasks

Use an incompatible task group or create the crane as machinery with capacity 1.

Finish date cannot be reached

Analyze critical path, check parallel execution, focus resources on critical tasks.

Subcontractor provides dates as an Excel list

Store external links or external documents in the information panel.

Authority milestone must remain fixed

Create the task as a milestone with a fixed date and make preceding float visible.