BuildProofFree tool
BuildProofFree tool
List the tasks, how many working days each takes, and what has to finish first. This works out the dates, the float on every task and the chain of work that actually controls the finish — and draws it as a Gantt chart you can print, download as an image, or open in Excel.
Each task is a bar from its start to its finish. Blue bars are the critical path — the chain where one day late is one day late on the whole job. Grey bars are work with float, and the thin line after a grey bar is how far it can slip before it matters. A diamond is a milestone. Arrows show what waits on what; a blue arrow is the link that is actually driving the next task's start.
With progress entered, a dark strip inside each bar shows how much is done, and a dashed outline shows how far a late task is projected to run past its planned finish.
Float is how many days a task can slip without moving the finish date. A task with fifteen days of float can go badly wrong and nobody notices. A task with zero float is on the critical path: one day late on it is one day late on the project.
This is the whole reason to draw a schedule rather than a list of dates. It tells you which of today's problems is worth dropping everything for and which one can wait a fortnight — and those are usually not the problems that are shouting loudest.
Most work follows something else finishing, and that is what a plain number in After means. Real jobs also overlap: framing starts once demolition is well under way, not when the last dumpster leaves. Write that as a start-to-start link — 4SS+10 means "ten working days after task 4 starts". A lag after a finish covers the waits nobody schedules and everybody pays for: 8+3 leaves three days after drywall for the floor to be ready.
Durations here are working days, so weekends are skipped. A five-day task starting Monday finishes Friday. It is the most common error in a schedule built by hand in a spreadsheet, and it compounds: ten tasks in sequence, each off by a weekend, is a finish date two weeks wrong.
Holidays do the same thing more quietly. A summer job that works straight through Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day on paper is three days late before it starts. Tick the holiday box, add any other days the site will be shut, and the dates move to match.
Lenders and owners often want a current schedule with a draw, and the reason is not filing. They are checking whether the money is running ahead of the work. If you have billed 60% of the contract and the schedule says you are four weeks behind, that is the conversation on the next call.
Enter the percent done on each task and a status date, and this shows which tasks are behind. More usefully, it shows which of them move the finish. A task twenty points behind with a month of float is a scheduling note; a critical task five points behind is a later completion date. If your contract carries liquidated damages, that second one has a price per day attached to it.
This is deliberately small. Finish-to-start and start-to-start links with lags, one calendar for the whole job, progress measured against the current plan. It does not do finish-to-finish links, resource levelling, or a saved baseline to compare against. Anyone who needs those is running Primavera P6 or Microsoft Project, and should. What this gives you is a defensible schedule with real float, in about ten minutes, for nothing.
It also does not tie the schedule to what you have billed. That comparison — billed against built, with the contract's completion date and LD rate alongside — is what the paid product is for.
Yes. Enter tasks, durations and what follows what, and it computes early and late dates, float and the critical path across working days.
Yes. Working-day calendars are built in, and you can exclude holidays.
Download a CSV or an image of the Gantt chart, or print it directly.
No. It is a fast, free way to build and share a working schedule; large projects still need real scheduling software.
Free tool from BuildProof. It runs entirely in your browser — nothing you type is uploaded, and your work is saved on this device only. This generator produces an original working-day schedule using finish-to-start and start-to-start relationships. It is not a substitute for scheduling software on a project that needs one, and nothing here is legal or contractual advice.