Visual versus Tabular Scheduling Programs

Effective scheduling in construction is crucial for ensuring timely project completion and maintaining budget control. Scheduling programs play an important role in this process by providing digital tools to develop, monitor, and adjust project timelines effectively. In the industry’s current method of practice, tabular scheduling programs are utilized that require users to enter task information and their relationships in a tabular format. Recently, a new scheduling program approach called visual scheduling has emerged that requires users to draw the network diagram to create the schedule. This paper presents an experimental study that evaluated the efficiency of schedule creation using a visual scheduling program compared to two tabular scheduling programs. The results show that the time spent creating a schedule using the visual scheduling program was significantly shorter than using tabular scheduling programs. Participants found visual scheduling easier to define tasks, define correlations, spot mistakes in the schedule, make changes to the schedule, and understand the overall schedule. The majority of the participants reported visual scheduling as a tool that allowed them to create schedules faster. They also found it to be a more intuitive scheduling tool and a method that can reduce the possibility of making mistakes during scheduling.