The MS Project Retirement: Why Construction Leaders are Securing Their Future with Planera

While Microsoft is pushing users toward Planner, many industry professionals find the new tool lacks the robust features required for high-stakes projects, noting that Planner is more individual-focused rather than team-focused and lacks essential mid-to-long term visibility. Consequently, forward-thinking firms like AMLI Residential, Drill Tech, and Newstar are not waiting for the forced migration—they are transitioning to Planera, a cloud-based platform purpose-built for the realities of the job site.

The Challenge: Moving Beyond Siloed Legacy Tools

MS Project’s traditional model and the upcoming forced transition to Planner have created critical bottlenecks for construction teams:

• Stuck on the Desktop: For those teams who don’t want to shift to Planner, Microsoft’s “sunsetting” of the web version of Project means that they are stuck with the single user, desktop-based version of Microsoft Project. The lack of a cloud-based solution makes collaboration much more difficult. In this scenario, scheduling is a siloed activity, and construction teams don’t benefit from the wisdom of the group. Also, when schedules are stored locally, the potential to lose critical data is significantly greater vs. when that data is based on the cloud. Michael Trenski, Director of Construction Technology at AMLI, noted: "It can become really siloed. You don’t know which [file] is which... we knew a cloud-based scheduling software was what we were looking for."
• Manual Field Workarounds: Because legacy tools were not accessible or intuitive for field use, teams often resorted to Excel or "sticky-note" systems for updates. Brad Bloomberg, Vice President at Miles-McClellan, shared: "People just didn’t want to engage with [MS Project]... it wasn’t intuitive or accessible, the schedule wasn’t as reliable as it needed to be."
• Version Control Struggles: Testing "what-if" scenarios in Microsoft Project required building entirely separate files. Scott Pardee, Senior Estimator at Big-D Construction, explained: "In MS Project, that would have meant building separate files and juggling updates. With Planera, it’s point-and-click."
• Problems with Float Path Analysis: While Project was capable of handling float path analysis, Planner is not. This stems from Planner’s inability to calculate multiple sequences of slack beyond a single, basic critical path. Because the tool lacks the logic to perform a traditional "backward pass," it cannot identify near-critical paths or rank tasks by their degree of flexibility. This makes it impossible to visualize which non-critical sequences are most likely to impact the schedule, treating float as an invisible attribute rather than a measurable metric.

The Solution: A Collaborative Platform Built for Construction

Planera offers a whiteboard-style "Canvas" that mirrors how construction teams naturally plan, providing a seamless transition for firms moving away from Microsoft’s ecosystem.

1. Rapid Adoption and Faster Schedule Creation

Firms report building complex schedules in record time with Planera’s intuitive interface.

• "I built out our 2,000-line master schedule in a lot less time than I think a Microsoft Project schedule would have taken, which is obviously great." — Jake Berg, Assistant Project Manager, AMLI Residential
• "Planera has helped us make our schedules more accurate and efficient... slashing scheduling time in half." — Joe Henry, Chief Estimator, Shimmick Construction

2. Visual Clarity for Clients and Owners

Traditional Gantt charts often cause stakeholders to "glaze over." Planera’s visual "Canvas" makes the critical path easy to follow for owners and stakeholders.

• "The visual piece... it was pretty quick to see that they responded to that better than a Gantt. The client... could see where the critical path runs through." — John Plyer, Director of Operations, Newstar
• "The visual actually is the tool that we use to walk them through... in a Gantt, I think in a minute or two they glaze over and don’t know what they’re looking at." — John Plyer, Director of Operations, Newstar

3. Empowering the Field

Planera’s mobile and iPad capabilities allow superintendents to update progress in real-time, ensuring the master schedule is a "living document" rather than a static report.

• "The best thing I like about the iPad application is I can be walking around the job site making real-time updates. If I see something that’s become critical, I can immediately check it." — John Karam, Assistant Superintendent, Miles-McClellan
• "Instead of everyone using their own Excel or sticky-note systems, Planera puts it all in one space... and it all pipes back to the master." — Todd Von Krosigk, Senior Superintendent, HITT

The Impact: Strategic Risk Mitigation and On-Time Delivery

By moving to Planera, contractors are achieving higher accuracy and avoiding the pitfalls of "fake schedules" that fail in reality.

• Maximizing Project Success: Drill Tech transitioned from MS Project to Planera for mission-critical tunnel projects, where precise scheduling is essential to avoid forfeiting power generation revenue. Brian Harris, Project Executive, stated: "We greatly appreciate Planera’s ease of use in comparison to Microsoft Project. Planera helped us to maximize our chances to get this critical schedule set up right."
• Enterprise-Wide Visibility: Eric Heidman, VP of Project Management at Landmark Excavating, called Planera an "absolute game-changer" for providing transparency and the ability to see all project schedules in one centralized dashboard.
• Full Commitment to the Cloud: Following successful pilots, companies like AMLI have officially discontinued concurrent MS Project updates, making Planera their primary scheduling standard to ensure they remain on a supported, construction-first platform.

Conclusion: Don't Wait for the Shutdown

As Microsoft continues to shift away from traditional project management toward generic task-management tools like Planner, construction firms face a choice: adapt to a "dismantled" tool or move to a purpose-built solution.

Planera provides the rescue boat for teams needing the precision of CPM scheduling with the ease of modern collaboration. As Jake Berg of AMLI summarizes: "Planera has given us a faster, more transparent way to manage complex schedules. The buy-in from our team has been incredible."