/tilos/
Rail, highways, pipelines, water networks and tunnels don’t schedule well on a Gantt chart. A job that runs kilometres along an alignment needs a chart with distance on it, not just time. Time-Location Scheduling (also called Line of Balance, or by its older French name, the “chemin de fer” method) solves that by putting distance on the chart itself. TILOS is the software the UK infrastructure industry uses to build, resource and control that chart.
This section is the plain-English guide to both the method and the software: how to read a time-location chart with no prior knowledge at all, how TILOS is actually used day to day, and worked examples across the sectors that rely on it most — rail, water & sewerage, and oil & gas pipelines.
Start here
- What is Time-Location Scheduling? — the method explained from first principles, no software required to follow it.
- TILOS vs Primavera P6 — what each tool is actually for, and when you need both.
- Examples Library — three fully worked examples, simple to advanced, each with a real chart.
- FAQ — the questions we’re asked most by planners and training buyers.
- Glossary — chainage, sector profile, baseline and the rest of the vocabulary, defined.
Browse by sector
- TILOS for Rail Projects — track, OLE and signalling renewals, and planning around possession windows.
- TILOS for Water & Sewerage Projects — trunk main and sewer renewal, manholes and road-crossing constraints.
- TILOS for Oil & Gas Pipelines — cross-country pipeline construction spreads and environmental work windows.
Who this is for
- Planners and schedulers building and maintaining the TILOS model itself.
- Project managers who need the “so what”: confidence in the completion date and early warning of crew clashes.
- Contracts and claims managers who use the chart to demonstrate where and when the programme was actually blocked.
- Project risk managers tracking chainage-based exposure — a weather window that only applies to one stretch of the route.
- Document controllers, PMO support engineers and cost engineers distributing outputs, rolling packages up into the master programme, and reading resource and cost histograms.
Trusted delivery. TILOS and Primavera P6 training delivered across nuclear, rail, oil & gas and infrastructure for 15+ years, with 500+ people trained at organisations including HS2, Hinkley Point C, Alstom, Strabag, Technip, Vinci and Fluor.