TILOS and Primavera: Complementary Tools for Project Success

As the CEO of Future Network Development (FND) and a Civil Engineer who has worked on construction sites and in technical offices before becoming a system implementer, I’ve had the opportunity to see firsthand the challenges of managing large-scale projects. Throughout my career, I’ve been deeply involved in the development and training of Primavera before Oracle’s acquisition. I worked closely with my long-time friends and mentors, Dick Faris and Joel Koppelman, to push Primavera toward integrating Time-Location planning into their software.

In fact, before Oracle’s acquisition of Primavera in 2008, I was a strong advocate for investing in Time-Location scheduling, and I was convinced that had the acquisition not happened, Primavera would have included an in-built Time-Location system. That’s how much I believed in the concept and its value for linear projects. After Oracle acquired Primavera, I immediately traveled to Germany to start the TILOS distribution. At that time, TILOS was mostly popular in France, Canada, and Germany, but through the efforts of our FND Partner Network, TILOS became a widely recognized global standard for linear project management.

The Power of TILOS Under Trimble’s Umbrella

TILOS: The Ultimate Tool for Early-Stage Planning

One of the key strengths of TILOS is its ability to be used at the very early stages of a project for creating investment scenarios and developing tender strategies. Unlike traditional Gantt-based systems, TILOS shifts the focus away from individual activities and emphasizes disciplines, such as logistics, resource planning, and sequencing. This makes TILOS an ideal tool for crafting strategic plans with both optimistic and pessimistic scenarios, allowing decision-makers to adjust strategies in real time.

Another significant advantage is that TILOS reduces complexity by using 100 times fewer activities than traditional Gantt-based tools. This simplification allows project teams to update schedules more efficiently and make necessary adjustments without over-complicating the project. This makes TILOS ideal for feasibility studies and investment scenario planning during the early project stages.

TILOS and Primavera: Complementary Strengths

Clients often ask me whether TILOS or Primavera is the better tool, and my answer is always the same: you cannot compare apples to oranges. These tools are not competitors—they complement each other. Primavera is unmatched when it comes to CPM scheduling, resource management, and Earned Value Management (EVM), making it the best solution for managing large-scale projects that require meticulous control over resources, costs, and timelines.

Meanwhile, TILOS is the industry leader for managing linear infrastructure projects such as railways, highways, pipelines, and energy transmission lines. These types of projects involve repetitive tasks spread over long distances, making time-location planning essential for optimizing progress. TILOS uses the Time-Chainage Diagram (also called Time-Distance Diagram, March Chart, LOB, or French Diagram, depending on the region) to display both time and spatial data, giving project managers a complete view of how activities progress along a linear path.

Time-Chainage Diagram: A Key Concept for Linear Projects

For project managers working on linear projects, understanding the Time-Chainage Diagram is essential. This tool combines time scheduling and spatial location to visually represent how construction progresses along a linear route, helping project teams better manage repetitive work and allocate resources efficiently.

• Horizontal Axis (X-axis): Represents the distance or physical location along the project (e.g., kilometers, stations, or miles).
• Vertical Axis (Y-axis): Represents time (e.g., days, weeks, months).
• Activity Lines: The slope of the lines between the axes represents the pace of activities: Steep Line: Indicates a fast-moving activity. Shallow Line: Indicates a slow-moving activity.
• Overlap of Activities: When two lines overlap, it indicates simultaneous work at the same location, which may require additional resource management to avoid conflicts.

Benefits of Time-Chainage Diagrams:

• Visualizes complex scheduling information in a simple and effective way.
• Highlights spatial conflicts or delays, helping project managers resolve issues before they escalate.
• Optimizes resource allocation by showing where multiple activities occur simultaneously.

TILOS and ISETIA 4D/5D BIM Cloud Integration

In addition to its core features, TILOS now integrates with the ISETIA 4D/5D BIM Cloud, allowing project managers to visualize and track project progress in real-time, incorporating both time and cost data. This integration enables users to perform detailed simulations and track project performance against their financial and time-based objectives. With these capabilities, decision-makers can make more informed decisions based on comprehensive, real-time data, significantly improving project outcomes.

Simplifying Project Management with TILOS

In my experience, TILOS is a simpler and more efficient solution for managing linear projects compared to traditional Gantt-based tools. By focusing on disciplines rather than individual activities, TILOS allows for faster updates and more efficient management of complex projects. For infrastructure projects that require precise time-location planning, TILOS is the best tool available.

This simplicity is particularly valuable during the early stages of project planning, where rapid adjustments and scenario planning are critical. TILOS enables project managers to create investment scenarios and tender strategies with ease, using both optimistic and pessimistic plans to ensure that all variables are accounted for.

Conclusion: The Right Tool for the Right Job

Both TILOS and Primavera are indispensable tools for managing large, complex projects, particularly in the infrastructure sector. Primavera excels in CPM scheduling, resource management, and cost control, while TILOS is the premier solution for linear project management, allowing for precise control of time-location scheduling. Under the Trimble umbrella, TILOS has become even more powerful, thanks to its integration with other Trimble solutions, such as Quadri, Vision, and Quantm.

With the added capability of integrating with the ISETIA 4D/5D BIM Cloud, TILOS enables real-time visualization, project tracking, and comprehensive performance analysis. This makes it an ideal solution for any organization involved in linear infrastructure projects.

For project managers, directors, and engineers, mastering both TILOS and Primavera provides a strategic advantage. Understanding the Time-Location (or Linear Planning) concepts ensures that projects are planned, executed, and controlled with maximum efficiency, enabling on-time, on-budget project delivery.