How to Create a Project

Projects are the top-level container in BuildChart. Every task, dependency, team member, and timeline lives inside a project. Before you can start building your Gantt chart, you need to create a project to hold everything together.

Each project has a name, a start date, an end date (hard deadline), and an optional description. These details appear on your dashboard cards and help you keep track of multiple jobs at once.

Steps to Create a Project

Click "New Project" on the dashboard. You will find the button in the top-right area of the projects page.
Enter a project name that clearly identifies the job — for example, "Smith Kitchen Remodel" or "Oak Street New Build."
Set the start date. This is the first day of work on the project. All task scheduling flows from this date.
Set the end date (hard deadline). This is the date the project must be completed by. BuildChart uses this to flag schedule overruns.
Add an optional description. Use this field to note the scope of work, client contact information, or any other high-level details your team should know.
Click Create. Your new project opens immediately, ready for you to add tasks and invite team members.

Understanding the Hard Deadline

The end date you set acts as a hard deadline for the entire project. When you create task dependencies and BuildChart cascades date changes through the schedule, it checks every dependent task against this deadline. If a dependency cascade pushes any task past the project end date, you will see a warning alerting you to the schedule overrun.

This gives you early visibility into delays so you can adjust the schedule, add resources, or renegotiate the timeline before it becomes a problem on site.

The Description Field

The description is visible on your dashboard project cards and in the project settings page. It is a good place to summarize the scope of work, note the general contractor or client name, or record the job address. Keep it concise — a sentence or two is usually enough.

💡 Tip

Set your end date with a buffer. Construction rarely finishes exactly on schedule. Adding a week or two of cushion to your hard deadline gives you room to absorb minor delays without triggering warnings on every cascade.

📝 Note

You can change all project settings later from the project settings page. The project name, start date, end date, and description are all editable after creation.

Not sure where to begin?

Browse the example project on your dashboard to see what a real home construction project looks like in BuildChart. It’s read-only so you can explore without changing anything.