Choosing Gantt chart scheduling software for an engineering team sounds straightforward until you realize that many tools offer a Gantt view, while fewer provide the scheduling logic needed to manage complex, resource-constrained projects.
The distinction matters when you're coordinating design-to-commissioning phases, managing shared resource pools across multiple projects, balancing people with different skills, and maintaining a defensible schedule baseline.
This guide compares Celoxis, Smartsheet, and Starbrix for mid-sized engineering teams, focusing on scheduling mechanics, resource planning, integrations, governance, and cost.
What a mid-sized engineering team actually requires from scheduling software
For this comparison, consider an engineering organization with 20 to 80 licensed users, three to ten active project managers running concurrent projects, and shared resources working across multiple project schedules.
Projects may follow multi-phase sequences such as conceptual design, detailed engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning, or product engineering processes with cross-functional release gates.
Typical scheduling requirements include:
- WBS-style task hierarchies for work packages, sub-packages, and individual deliverables
- Multiple dependency types, including Finish-to-Start (FS), Start-to-Start (SS), Finish-to-Finish (FF), and Start-to-Finish (SF)
- Lead and lag offsets between dependent tasks
- Automatic critical path calculation
- Schedule recalculation when dependencies, dates, calendars, or resource availability change
- Resource leveling across concurrent projects
- Skill-based resource planning
- Baseline comparison against the current schedule
- Capacity planning across the entire project portfolio
- Controlled access for internal and external project participants
- Import and API capabilities for connecting project schedules with other business systems
The important question is therefore not simply whether a product can display a Gantt chart. It is whether the underlying scheduling engine can perform enough of the planning work automatically.
Three different approaches to engineering project scheduling
Celoxis provides a traditional project scheduling and PPM approach, with dependency management, critical path calculation, resource leveling, and multiple baselines.
Smartsheet combines spreadsheet-style project management with Gantt scheduling, dependency controls, critical path functionality, and a broad ecosystem of enterprise integrations.
Starbrix combines a full scheduling engine with company-wide project, resource, workload, time, financial, document, communication, and portfolio management. Gantt, Kanban, Calendar, workload planning, and project execution use the same underlying project and task information.
This becomes particularly relevant in engineering organizations where the same people work simultaneously on several projects. Starbrix treats multi-project capacity as a standard part of scheduling rather than as a separate planning layer.
Scheduling engine feature comparison
Dependency modeling and critical path
For engineering schedules, simple Finish-to-Start dependencies are rarely enough. Design activities can start in parallel, commissioning activities may need to finish together, and downstream work may begin before an upstream activity is completely finished.
Starbrix supports all four standard dependency types:
- Finish-to-Start (FS)
- Start-to-Start (SS)
- Finish-to-Finish (FF)
- Start-to-Finish (SF)
Dependencies can also include lead or lag offsets, specified in either days or weeks. These are managed through the Starbrix Dependency dialog.
This allows planners to model situations such as a downstream engineering activity starting two weeks before its predecessor is fully completed, or a commissioning activity beginning three days after another task reaches completion.
Starbrix also performs automatic critical path calculation. When a dependency or scheduled date changes, the critical path is recalculated automatically.
This means the Gantt chart is not simply displaying dates entered by the project manager. Changes to the scheduling logic propagate through the plan.
Resource leveling and skill-based scheduling
Resource leveling becomes especially important when the same engineers, specialists, or subcontractors participate in multiple concurrent projects.
Starbrix calculates schedules using actual available resource capacity.
Suppose an engineer has eight hours of daily capacity but five hours are already allocated to work in other projects. Starbrix can take that existing workload into account when calculating the schedule for another project.
If a task requires 40 hours of work and the assigned person has only four hours of available capacity per working day, the duration can be calculated accordingly. Changes in resource allocation can therefore affect task duration and finish dates.
Resource leveling can also be combined with competency requirements. This is important in engineering environments where assigning any available person is not sufficient: the resource must also have the skills required for the work.
Multi-project capacity is the default model
An important distinction in Starbrix is that capacity planning is not isolated to the project currently open in the Gantt chart.
Multi-project capacity is the standard starting point.
When Starbrix recalculates schedules and resource availability, it takes the person's assignments in other projects into account.
This matters in organizations running many projects concurrently. A project manager cannot realistically assume that an engineer's full working week is available simply because that engineer appears as a resource in the current project.
The scheduling calculation can therefore reflect the organization's real shared-resource environment rather than treating every project as an isolated schedule.
Working calendars, vacations, and automatic schedule recalculation
Engineering schedules rarely follow a simple uninterrupted Monday-to-Friday calendar.
Starbrix automatically recalculates schedules when dependencies or dates change and can take into account:
- Weekends
- Holidays and other non-working days
- Employee vacations
- Available working capacity
- Resource assignments in other projects
- Dependency relationships
- Planned workload
This allows schedule changes to propagate while still respecting the working time and capacity actually available.
For example, if a dependency moves a task into a period where the assigned engineer is on vacation, that absence can affect the calculated schedule rather than being ignored.
Baselines and schedule variance
Starbrix supports one project baseline.
The baseline captures the agreed project schedule so that subsequent changes can be compared against the original plan.
In the Gantt chart, the baseline can be displayed visually alongside the current planned and actual schedule using thin red or black lines. This makes schedule movement immediately visible without requiring the planner to switch to a separate report.
The baseline is normally retained as the reference schedule. If there is a significant need to establish a new reference point during the project, authorized users can resave the baseline.
For engineering teams, this provides a straightforward way to answer an important project-control question:
Where are we now compared with the schedule we committed to?
History, governance, and traceability
Scheduling governance involves more than keeping an old set of dates.
Starbrix retains history for several important project-management changes, including:
- Changes of project manager
- Changes of task responsibility
- Status changes
- Progress reports
- Changes to planned finish dates
This provides useful historical context when reviewing how a project developed and why its current state differs from earlier plans.
Smartsheet also provides documented activity logging for governance and audit purposes. Organizations with formal audit requirements should compare the exact event coverage and retention requirements of each platform against their own governance policies.
Importing complete project structures
Migration does not necessarily require building every Starbrix project manually.
Starbrix supports documented CSV-based import of multiple projects and their related planning information in a single import process.
Imported information can include:
- Projects
- Tasks
- Dependencies
- Schedules
- Work estimates
- Resources
This can be particularly useful when migrating an existing project portfolio from spreadsheets or another project-management system.
Rather than importing only a flat task list and rebuilding the scheduling logic afterward, organizations can prepare structured project data for bulk import.
Integration with ERP, accounting, and other systems
Integration is particularly important for engineering companies because project schedules rarely exist independently from the rest of the business.
Smartsheet has a broad documented connector ecosystem and API capabilities.
Celoxis also provides API access and enterprise connectivity.
Starbrix provides APIs for exchanging project and business information with external systems and has experience building customer-specific integrations for different purposes.
Starbrix APIs can be used for information such as:
- Products
- Customers
- Invoices
- Project income and costs
- Inventory events
- Purchases
- Reported hours
This makes it possible to connect project execution with ERP, accounting, invoicing, purchasing, or other business systems instead of maintaining duplicate information manually.
Starbrix also develops custom APIs and integrations where a customer's business process requires something beyond the standard interfaces.
For engineering organizations, this can be important because ERP integration requirements are often company-specific. One organization may need project actuals from an ERP, another may need purchasing information transferred from Starbrix, and a third may need customer orders to create projects automatically.
Migration checklist
Regardless of which platform you select, use a real engineering project when testing migration and scheduling behavior.
- Map your data. Identify how projects, tasks, dependencies, resources, planned work, start dates, finish dates, and other fields map to the target system.
- Test dependency logic. Use a project containing FS, SS, FF, and SF relationships together with lead and lag offsets.
- Test recalculation. Change predecessor dates and dependencies and verify how downstream dates and the critical path respond.
- Test the baseline. Save the approved schedule and then introduce deliberate schedule changes to verify how clearly variance is displayed.
- Test resource conflicts. Assign the same people to concurrent projects and see whether capacity calculations reflect their total workload.
- Test vacations and calendars. Place work across weekends, holidays, and employee vacations.
- Test integration. Exchange representative data with the ERP, accounting, or other systems used by the organization.
- Test governance. Review which significant changes can be traced afterward.
Cost and total cost of ownership
Subscription price is only one component of the total cost of project scheduling software.
Starbrix offers different user levels depending on how extensively each person needs to use the system. Current Starbrix pricing includes user levels at:
- €17.50 per user/month
- €10.50 per user/month
- €7.00 per user/month
This can be significant for engineering organizations because not everyone participating in a project needs the same level of functionality.
When comparing total cost, consider more than the subscription:
Scheduling effort. If resource conflicts have to be resolved manually, project managers spend time continuously rebuilding schedules.
Multi-project planning. If resource capacity across projects requires a separate product or PPM add-on, include that cost.
Integration. Consider both initial integration development and ongoing maintenance.
Migration. Bulk project, task, dependency, schedule, workload, and resource import can substantially reduce migration effort.
Training. Advanced scheduling functionality has value only if project managers understand dependencies, resource capacity, critical paths, and baselines.
How to run a realistic 60-day engineering pilot
A useful pilot should test scheduling behavior rather than simply whether users like the interface.
Start with a representative project containing perhaps 80–150 tasks, multiple project phases, several shared resources, skill requirements, dependencies, and an agreed baseline.
Weeks 1–2: Build the schedule
Create or import the project hierarchy. Include all four dependency types and several lead/lag offsets.
Then deliberately change predecessor dates and dependencies. Verify that downstream schedules and the critical path recalculate as expected.
Weeks 3–4: Baseline and variance
Save the project baseline.
Make several realistic changes: delay a predecessor, increase the work estimate, reassign a resource, and change a dependency.
Compare the baseline against the new schedule visually.
Weeks 5–6: Resource capacity
This is where engineering scheduling products should be tested hardest.
Assign the same engineers to several concurrent projects. Create deliberate resource conflicts. Add vacations. Change working capacity. Require specific competencies for selected activities.
Then observe how each system recalculates the schedule.
For Starbrix, this test should be performed across multiple projects because multi-project resource capacity is part of the normal scheduling model.
Weeks 7–8: Integration and governance
Import representative project structures and test the required ERP or accounting integration.
Make changes to project managers, task responsibilities, statuses, progress reports, and planned finish dates, and verify the history available afterward.
Also include external project participants if customers, engineering partners, suppliers, or subcontractors will use the system.
What separates a Gantt view from a scheduling engine
Every product in this comparison can display a Gantt chart. The more important distinction is how much of the scheduling work the system performs behind that chart.
Celoxis provides established scheduling and PPM functionality, including four dependency types, critical path calculation, resource leveling, and multiple baselines.
Smartsheet combines its familiar grid-based working model with dependency scheduling, critical path functionality, resource-management capabilities, activity logging, and a broad integration ecosystem.
Starbrix combines Gantt scheduling with automatic critical path calculation, all four dependency types, lead/lag offsets, resource leveling, skill requirements, working calendars, vacations, and multi-project capacity calculations. Its baseline functionality provides visual comparison against the current schedule, while project history retains important changes such as project managers, task responsibilities, statuses, progress reports, and planned finish dates.
The broader difference is that these scheduling capabilities are part of the same Starbrix environment used for project execution, workload management, time reporting, documents, communication, financial control, and portfolio management.
For an engineering organization, that can eliminate an important source of planning problems: the schedule, resource plan, actual work, project communication, and business information no longer have to live in separate systems.
