This comparison is usually written by software companies, which makes it worth stating the conclusion up front: they are not substitutes, and a page that tells you otherwise is selling you something.
Software does not replace a project controls engineer. It takes the mechanical half of the role — the earned value arithmetic, the critical path calculation, the risk quantification, the monthly assembly of a report. It does not take the judgement, the negotiation or the site knowledge.
For most contractors the choice was never between the two. Below roughly $30 million of combined work the hire was not going to happen anyway, so the real comparison is software against spreadsheets.
Above that, the answer is usually both — because in our experience a scheduler spends five days a month assembling the earned value report and review pack by hand, and that is an expensive way to do arithmetic.
Worth setting out properly, because the comparison is meaningless if the job is caricatured as "makes the schedule".
| The task | Software | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Critical path calculation | Fully | Deterministic arithmetic. There is no judgement in a forward and backward pass |
| Earned value and forecasting | Fully | Given clean inputs, this is computation — and it is where hand-built spreadsheets most often go wrong |
| Risk quantification | Fully | Probability-weighted exposure against contingency is a calculation. Identifying the risks is not |
| Assembling the monthly pack | Fully | The single biggest time sink in the role, and the least valuable use of the person |
| Schedule quality checking | Mostly | Structural checks are automatable; whether the critical path reflects how the job will be built is not |
| Spotting what changed and matters | Partly | A tool can rank movements by materiality. Deciding which one to act on stays with a person |
| Challenging a duration | No | Requires standing, context and a willingness to be unpopular |
| Facilitating a risk workshop | No | The value is in what people say out loud, and why they were reluctant to |
| Deciding whether to claim | No | Commercial judgement with relationship consequences |
| Defending a position to a client | No | Somebody has to be in the room and be accountable |
The pattern is consistent: software takes the work that has a right answer. The engineer keeps the work that has a defensible answer.
The schedulers I engage sit in that $120k–$160k range, and here is where the month actually goes. The earned value report is built by hand from P6 every period — estimate-to-complete reduced manually against actuals, milestone slippage graphed in Excel, resource curves built in Excel as well.
Four days a month on the EVM report alone — two to draft, two to finalise — and another day on the review pack. That is five days. A quarter of a scheduler's month, every month, spent assembling a document rather than interrogating it.
None of those five days is judgement. It is transcription, arithmetic and chart-building against numbers P6 already holds.
A project controls engineer in Australia sits broadly between $120,000 and $160,000 in salary for an experienced practitioner, plus on-costs — superannuation, insurances, leave, equipment, recruitment — which typically add 25 to 40 per cent. Resources and major infrastructure pay above the range; building and fit-out often below. Contract day rates run higher per day and suit project-by-project engagement.
Software starts at $395 a month including GST, priced on the combined contract value under management rather than per seat, so adding people to the platform costs nothing.
The spreadsheet status quo looks free and is not. It costs the days spent rebuilding the pack each month, plus the value of what gets missed because nobody had time to look properly.
Setting an annual salary against a monthly subscription and implying they buy the same thing. They do not. One is a person who can argue; the other is a system that can compute. The legitimate comparison is narrower: what does it cost to get the mechanical half done properly?
Software. The hire was not happening at this scale, and the real alternative is the spreadsheet you already have. Start there and revisit when the portfolio grows.
Software, and it is the clearest case on this page. Five days a month on the EVM report and review pack is a quarter of what you are paying for, spent on transcription. Removing the monthly rebuild gives you back the part you actually hired.
Both. The engineer does the analysis and stands behind it; the system keeps the contemporaneous record that makes the analysis defensible.
Both, in that order of urgency — get the system separate from the person first. When they leave, and eventually they will, what remains is either a working function or a folder nobody can read.
Hire, or engage a consultant. No software solves this and none should claim to.
Aegis does the reporting and analysis a person would otherwise do by hand. That is the whole claim, and it is deliberately narrow. It computes earned value against real cost, tracks float and critical path movement, quantifies risk exposure against contingency, produces a probabilistic forecast, and writes a monthly assessment where every rating traces back to the number that produced it.
It does not negotiate, it does not attend site meetings, and it cannot tell you that the concrete sub is always late in winter. If you have someone who knows that, the tool makes them faster. If you do not, it gives you the half of the function that can be systematised — which is considerably better than the spreadsheet, and considerably worse than both.
One structural benefit worth naming, because it is the one buyers underrate: the system is not the person. Definitions, history and method stay with the business. A new hire inherits a working function instead of an archaeology project.
No. It takes the computation and the reporting. It does not take judgement, negotiation or site knowledge — and any vendor claiming otherwise is describing a product that does not exist.
Broadly $120,000–$160,000 salary for an experienced practitioner, plus 25–40% on-costs. Resources and major infrastructure above; building often below.
Below about $30M combined work the hire usually was not going to happen, so the real comparison is software against spreadsheets. Software.
Because you are paying for judgement and spending it on arithmetic. Removing the monthly rebuild returns the part you hired for.
On a spreadsheet-based function, most of the capability goes with them. That is the strongest practical argument for keeping the system separate from the person.
Aegis takes the computation and the monthly assembly — earned value, float, risk exposure, forecast and a written assessment — so the person doing controls can spend their time on the part only a person can do.
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