Although some schedulers tend to use a project's activity codes to help them build schedules that teams can understand, Japka urged users to "always use the WBS as the default way of presenting your project."

Benjamin Crosby, director of BIM with Yates & Son Construction of Jackson, Miss., said getting more project foremen and superintendents to use the scheduling tools and adopt them on a project can be a slog.

With scheduling tools, he added, the key to project success is their usability. They just have to be clear and make sense to the contractors executing the schedule.

"I know I'm on the way to adoption [of a schedule that works for the contractors] when a superintendent comes to me and says, 'Your schedule is wrong,' and is ready to start an argument. 'Thank you,' I say, 'and how can I fix it?' After that, their whole mentality starts to shift."