Today we’re starting a series of articles that showcase how SVAR components are used in real-life applications. Our first story features Solenium, a Colombian company that builds solar mini-farms to generate and distribute clean, sustainable energy.
Jose Miguel Castrillón Giraldo, a lead software developer of Solenium, shares his experience of using SVAR React Gantt Chart in their in-house application – a project management platform focused on the construction of solar mini-farms, combining data visualization with advanced planning and tracking tools.
In this journey, he has worked closely with Lisbeth Núñez and Jose Pulgarín, who took SVAR Gantt and built something truly outstanding with it. So, this is the Solenium’s story:
Why Gantt Chart? Tackling Complex Projects
The main challenge of the application was the complexity of the projects we manage: they involve many activities, dependencies, and several team leaders. In this context, a simple task list or tools without real-time collaboration were insufficient.
We needed a clear and visual way to organize schedules, understand how activities connect, and ensure teams could coordinate without losing sight of planned dates or changes in progress. The Gantt chart was the natural solution, as it is a project management standard and allowed us to translate that complexity into a visual, editable, and shared view.
Through the Gantt chart, users can easily edit and view the progress of each task, check its status, analyze dependencies, identify the critical path, and obtain progress indicators based on working days. With these requirements clear, the next challenge was finding the right tool to implement this vision.
Choosing SVAR React Gantt
Building a Gantt chart from scratch was not viable, as it would have distracted us from our main goal of delivering value without excessive time cost. We explored alternatives: some were closed enterprise tools with no real-time collaboration, others were too expensive, too simplistic, or lacked flexibility.
SVAR Gantt stood out as a robust, flexible, customizable, and scalable solution. On top of that, being open source aligned perfectly with our vision of contributing not only to fighting climate change but also to the software community.
Easy Integration and Customization of SVAR Gantt
Having selected SVAR React Gantt as our foundation, we then focused on tailoring it to meet Solenium’s specific operational needs. We especially valued its high level of customization, easy integration with modern technologies like React, and the robustness to handle complex projects with multiple activities and dependencies.
Clear documentation and an active support forum also made adoption much easier, allowing us to focus on adapting it to our needs rather than building from scratch.
Here are the key customizations we implemented to meet Solenium’s needs:
- Change propagation: When users update task dates, progress, or other properties, these changes automatically reflect in parent tasks or related dependencies, giving real-time visibility of their impact on the overall schedule.
- Critical path calculation: By computing slack, we highlight the project’s most sensitive path in the UI, showing activities that cannot be delayed. This view updates dynamically as users change dates.
- Working days calendar: We adapted durations to Colombia’s work calendar, excluding weekends and holidays automatically, ensuring planned dates accurately reflect real working time.
- Hierarchical UI: We extended SVAR’s task tree into a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), adding visual markers like colors and font weight by task level, making hierarchies clearer and more legible.
- Additional tools: We integrated complementary features such as S-curves, report generation, and procedures, all within a user experience aligned with our brand identity.
The Results: Faster Development, Better Planning
SVAR React Gantt significantly reduced our development time by eliminating the need to implement a Gantt chart from scratch. This allowed us to focus on business logic and delivering value rather than just building UI infrastructure. Internal users now benefit from a more reliable, interactive, and real-time planning tool, directly aligned with their workflows.
SVAR is an excellent option if you’re looking for a flexible, robust, and modern open-source library to integrate Gantt charts. It provides a strong foundation while still allowing deep customization, meaning you can adapt it to your specific domain without reinventing the wheel. For us, it has proven to be both a time saver and a long-term strategic choice.
Share Your Story
From SVAR’s side, we are incredibly proud to see projects like this built on our React Gantt, turning it into a tool that supports both innovation and a sustainable future. If you’d like to share your story, just contact us and we’ll be happy to highlight your experience with SVAR components in our blog.