Free online courseMicrosoft Project for Construction Scheduling, Resources and EVM (MSP)

Course Description

Take control of construction timelines and costs with practical Microsoft Project skills built for real jobsite demands. This free online course guides you through setting up a schedule the way contractors and project teams actually need it: with clear work breakdown structures, dependable logic links, and milestones that make progress easy to track on a Gantt chart and in network views. You will learn to create schedules that reflect how work happens in the field, not just how it looks on paper, so your plan is easier to communicate, defend, and update.

A strong schedule is more than dates, so you will also focus on resource and cost planning. You will work with different resource types, configure rates, cost accruals, calendars, and working time, and understand what happens when units, work, or duration changes under different task types. That means you can forecast staffing needs, spot overallocations, and apply practical leveling approaches to reduce clashes without losing visibility. The course emphasizes decision-making, helping you understand why Microsoft Project behaves the way it does when you adjust settings or add resources.

As the project moves forward, updating progress accurately is critical for trustworthy forecasts. You will learn how to report progress in a way that allows Microsoft Project to recalculate dates and projections correctly, and how baselines support meaningful comparisons. From there, the course connects scheduling to performance measurement through Earned Value Management, explaining key indicators such as CPI, SPI, schedule variance, and the role of percent complete versus physical percent complete for construction realities.

To help you work efficiently, you will also practice filtering, grouping, and switching between essential views for planning, tracking, and analysis, plus moving data in and out of Microsoft Project using common formats like Excel and PDF. By the end, you will be able to produce schedules that are easier to maintain, resource plans that are more realistic, and reports that support clear decisions with stakeholders.