Construction scheduling software that survives a programme review
Build the programme, check it against the standard your contract names, and read whatever the trades send back, whether that is Microsoft Project, Primavera or a spreadsheet. The scheduling half runs on the free plan, and the schedule check needs no account at all.
No card, no sales call. The check runs on a file you upload and tells you the score.
Written for whoever owns the programme
Four jobs, one artifact. Every one of them ends up defending a date to somebody who did not set it.
Main contractors
You issue the programme and you receive fourteen of them back from trades who each built theirs differently. The job is reconciling those into something you can defend at a progress meeting.
Subcontractors
Somebody else owns the master programme and you have to fit inside it, prove you did, and show what it cost you when it moved. Usually without a planner on staff.
Engineering and design consultancies
Phased deliverables with sign-off gates, where the schedule is contractual and the client reviews it rather than reads it.
Residential and small builders
Several jobs at once, the same three crews across all of them, and no planning department. The clash is the problem, not the Gantt chart.
Free construction scheduling software, and what free means here
Most of this category puts the schedule behind the paid tier and gives away the task list. We do the opposite, because the schedule is the thing worth having. On the free plan:
- Gantt chart with the critical path through it
- Baselines, and the variance against them
- Milestones and working calendars, including holidays
- The issue log, kept separate from the programme
- Multi-currency budgets
- Cross-project reports and shareable report links
- Import from .mpp, Project XML, .mpx, Primavera XER, ProjectLibre, GanttProject, Excel and CSV
On a paid plan instead:
- Resource capacity planning (Professional and up)
- Earned value management (Professional and up)
- AI risk detection (Business and up)
Check a programme against a standard you can point at
When a trade sends back a programme with no logic, forty hard constraints and a critical path that runs through a milestone, the argument you want is not an opinion. It is a standard. The fourteen DCMA checks are that standard, they are named in a lot of government and infrastructure contracts, and we run all fourteen for free.
A check that cannot be assessed says so rather than passing. If the file carried no baseline, baseline execution reads as not assessed, not as a pass, because a pass you did not earn is worse than a gap you can see.
What it does not do. It scores the programme as submitted. It does not judge whether the durations are realistic, which is the other half of a real review and the half a person still has to do. Treat the score as the argument you open with, not the verdict.
Read the programme they actually sent
Nobody on a project agrees on a file format. What arrives is .mpp from one trade, a Primavera XER from the main contractor, an MSPDI export from somebody being helpful, a ProjectLibre or GanttProject file from the engineer who would not buy a licence, and a spreadsheet from the electrician. All of them come in, with a column mapping step for the spreadsheet and a fidelity preview that tells you what will and will not survive before you commit to it.
Task hierarchy, milestones, all four dependency types with their lag, constraints, deadlines and costs come across. Resources are matched by email, and anybody unmatched is listed rather than silently dropped.
What does not come across. Baselines, working calendars and assignment units do not import, and the wizard says so on screen before you start rather than afterwards. You can capture a baseline once the plan is in; it is the one stored in the old file that does not travel.
And the direction matters. We READ Primavera XER and we cannot WRITE it. Microsoft Project XML we do write. So if your main contractor requires an XER back, the round trip does not close, and that is worth knowing now rather than three weeks in.
Crew and labour across more than one job
The clash that actually costs money is the same gang promised to three sites in the same week, by three different programmes, none of which can see the other two. Capacity is tracked across the whole organisation, so a person or a trade committed past their hours shows up once rather than in whichever programme you happened to open.
Where it stops. Seeing the clash is one thing and resolving it is another. Levelling, which proposes the moves, is a per-schedule analysis: it works inside one programme rather than arbitrating between three. Which job gives way is still your call, and it probably should be.
Resource capacity planning is on Professional and up. Everything in the section above it is free.
What this is not
This is a scheduling tool. It is not a field operations platform, and the difference matters more than a feature list makes it look.
There are no daily logs, no RFIs, no submittal registers, no drawing management, no site photos and no inspection checklists. If what you need is a phone at the site gate capturing what happened today, buy something built for that. We are honestly not it, and a page that implied otherwise would waste a week of your evaluation.
What we are is the programme: build it, check it against a standard, read whatever anyone sends you, and report against a baseline every month without rebuilding the report. Plenty of firms run both, and the schedule is the half that usually has no owner.
What contractors ask us
The awkward ones first.
Is this actually free, or free until it matters?
The scheduling half is free, permanently, on the Free plan: the Gantt with its critical path, baselines and variance, milestones, working calendars, the issue log, multi-currency budgets, cross-project reports, and import from .mpp, Project XML, .mpx, Primavera XER, ProjectLibre, GanttProject, Excel and CSV. Resource capacity planning and earned value are on Professional and up. The Schedule Health Check needs no account at all.
Can you open a Primavera P6 programme?
Yes, we read XER, and we cannot write it. So you can take a P6 programme in, schedule against it, check it and report on it, but if your main contractor requires an XER file back then the round trip does not work and you should know that before you start. Microsoft Project XML we do write.
What does the schedule check actually check?
The fourteen DCMA checks: logic, leads, lags, relationship types, hard constraints, high float, negative float, high duration, invalid dates, resources, missed tasks, critical path test, critical path length index and baseline execution index. It scores the programme as submitted. It does not judge whether the durations are realistic, which is the other half of a review and the half a person still has to do.
Does it do daily logs, RFIs and submittals?
No. Those are field operations and this is a scheduling tool. If the thing you need is a photo log on a phone at the site gate, a field platform is the right purchase and we are not it. If the thing you need is a programme that holds up under review, that is this.
We run five jobs with the same crews. Does it spot the clash?
Capacity is tracked across the whole organisation, so you can see a person or a trade committed beyond their hours across every job at once. Levelling, which proposes the moves, is a per-schedule analysis, so it works inside one programme rather than resolving a clash between three. Seeing the clash is the free-to-Professional part; resolving it across programmes is still a human decision.
How long does it take to get a programme in?
Upload the file and it parses in the browser or through the converter, depending on the format. There is a column mapping step for spreadsheets and a fidelity preview that tells you what will and will not survive the import before you commit to it.
Moving off Microsoft Project rather than working alongside it? The migration guide covers what survives the move, and Onplana Schedule opens .mpp and XER on the desktop for free.
Put a real programme through it
Upload the last programme a trade sent you and see what the fourteen checks say about it. No account, and the file is deleted within 24 hours.