If your site team reports on WhatsApp and the office rebuilds the sheet before every client meeting, this is for you. It is not for a firm with nobody who owns the programme after the planner sends it.
What does your office ask every morning?
Most contractors choose project management tools by feature list. We choose by the question the office asks first, because it decides which view the team will actually open.
The rule is ours, drawn from how we set up Projects for fit-out and MEP firms. The next three sections give the receipts for each row.
Why does a board alone miss the date?
Because a board has no time axis. BuilderXPro, a construction software vendor, wrote on 28 May 2026 that "Kanban does not inherently show time": two tasks in the same In Progress column can have very different deadlines. So you add colour codes or due-date badges to see urgency.
For a job that waits on Civil Defence or DEWA, that is the failure. The card for the glass partitions says "Awaiting approval" and looks the same on day 2 as on day 19. A board tells you what is stuck. It does not tell you which stuck card moves the handover.
Why does a Gantt alone cost more to keep up?
Because every task needs a duration and a predecessor before the chart is true. The same vendor says Gantt charts "require more setup effort", and that they become unwieldy at 500 or more tasks unless you group the work. A small contractor may not have the hours.
That vendor sizes the view by project count: list view for 1 to 5 projects, Kanban added for 5 to 20, Gantt for 20 or more. That is a vendor's view of the market, and we would not use it as it stands. A Dubai contractor with four live jobs can need a Gantt on all four, because the approval dates move the work, not the job count. Test it against your own question: if a comment round from the authority can push three trades at once, you need the linked dates.
When do we tell you to stay on the spreadsheet?
When the office has fewer than three live jobs and one person updates the sheet. That person is the system. A tool added on top gives them a second place to type, and the site engineers still ring them for the date.
Move when two things happen together: site engineers ask the office for dates they should be able to read, and someone rebuilds the sheet before a client meeting because the last version is out of date. One of the two alone is not enough reason to switch.
Why does one record matter more than the view?
The three views are not three tools. Fieldwire, by Hilti, wrote on 20 March 2026: "The key is that all four views pull from the same task data." A foreman updates a task on the board and the project manager sees it on the Gantt. It is a vendor's own page, and it states the right test for any tool you shortlist: change a card, then look for the change on the programme.
If your contract also names a programme format, read Contract names P6? Check before you buy it first. The view you run in the office and the file the client asks for are separate questions.
What does Mindcat Projects do, and what does it cost?
It is for a fit-out or MEP contractor with several live jobs. Each job gets a board with a column for each stage, a Gantt where linked tasks move together when one date changes, and a task list, all on the same tasks. Site engineers update their tasks from a phone browser. Clients and consultants get a free read-only login. Your copy is hosted in the UAE or Saudi Arabia.
Not today: baseline comparison, Gantt PDF export, the team planner, portfolio and resource management belong to the maker's Enterprise add-ons, billed at cost and outside our member price. Linked tasks move automatically once setup switches scheduling to automatic. The Arabic screens are partly translated and read left to right, updates reach people by email and in the app rather than WhatsApp, and it is not connected to Dubai Municipality, Civil Defence or DEWA portals.
Our page prices each member a month in bands: AED or SAR 179 for members 1 to 10, 69 for 11 to 30, 45 for 31 to 100 and 29 from 101. Each plan has a monthly minimum, so no one buys a single member at the per-member rate. The shared plan minimum is AED/SAR 2,499 a month and covers up to 10 members. Your own copy starts at AED/SAR 5,349 a month, covering up to 78 members. For a 12-job contractor with 30 members the bands come to 10 × 179 + 20 × 69 = AED 3,170, so the AED 5,349 minimum applies. The quick start is a fixed package we set up for AED/SAR 2,500 on the shared plan, up to 10 members. Prices exclude 5 percent UAE VAT and 15 percent Saudi VAT.
We call the method One programme per job. You tell us how many live jobs and members you run, what your office asks each morning and where it should run. We reply with the setup plan and the monthly price per member. If the spreadsheet still answers your question, we say so. If it does not, tell us about your jobs. For the trade in full, see Projects for fit-out contractors and the Projects page.
