Line of Balance Software
Line of Balance Software Overview
Line of Balance Software is used to prepare line-of-balance charts or line-of-balance diagrams, a type of linear scheduling (see Linear Scheduling Software) or time-distance diagram used in the production and construction industries.
For construction projects, line of balance charts and line of balance software are predominantly used in the commercial building and high-rise construction industries to plan, control and report construction schedules, by representing the progress of construction trades across multiple physical areas of construction, such as buildings, floors, rooms or areas.
Line of Balance Software can generate line of balance charts using three methods:
Directly generated from scheduling software applications, examples are Asta Powerproject, or Trimble Vico Office
Produced manually, such as drawing or AutoCad software applications
Produced by linking to scheduling data in scheduling software applications (eg. Turbo-Chart, or excel)
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Line of Balance Software requirements
Line of Balance Software creates line of balance charts by producing charts using dual axes. The horizontal axis usually represents time, and the software allows selection of the time period to be show, as hours, days, weeks or months. Gridlines are drawn by the line of balance software to create the date/time grid. The second vertical axis is used to represent the physical work areas.
For Line of Balance charts the software needs to be able to represent physical work areas as a sequence, that may be hierarchical if desired. Typical examples of the physical work areas may be Building, Floor, Area, Room. The physical work axis is presented in the order that the works will be undertaken in, usually in a vertically upward direction. The physical areas at the lower end of the vertical axis are work areas where each trade commences their work, and the areas at the top of the vertical axis are areas where each trade completes their work. The construction sequence is therefore “up” the vertical axes.
Line of Balance Software Schedule Updating
Line of Balance charts typically represent schedule tasks using only lines to represent the works progress across the physical work locations, therefore Line of balance software as a minimum must be able to represent schedule tasks as lines on axes of time and location. As the angle of the lines represents the rate of production for each schedule task, changes made to the schedule that result in changes to production rates must be reflected in the line of balance software to ensure that the current schedule methodology is being represented. This may be either by direct manipulation on the line of balance chart or by refreshing data from the scheduling application.
Production rates changes
Buffers or Float in CPM
"Balancing" exercise
Turbo-Chart as Line of Balance Software
Turbo-Chart may be used as a line of balance software tool in two different methods.
Firstly by directly linking to a CPM scheduling tool, and all balancing and buffering conducted in the scheduling tool, Turbo-Chart can then import the schedule data for presentation.
By making task shapes display as line types, and using location start and end values representing the physical work locations, Turbo-Chart is able to produce output as a line of balance software tool. Find out more
Manually created Line of balance diagrams
Turbo Chart may also be used for the second method of manually creating Line of Balance diagrams by drag-and-dropping tasks on the chart itself, by following these steps:
The dates for tasks that result from the manual creation are available as a table of tasks and dates that can be exported from Turbo-Chart for use in any other application requiring such information.
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