Is Claim Digger Still the Best Option for P6 Schedule Comparison?
Claim Digger is the tool most P6 schedulers know. But is it still the best option for modern construction projects? An honest look at where it fits.
If you searched for "Claim Digger" and landed here, you are probably a construction scheduler or project manager who needs to compare two Primavera P6 schedules and wants to know the best way to do it.
Claim Digger has been part of the P6 ecosystem for a long time. For many schedulers it was the first tool they ever used for this purpose, and it is still widely mentioned in scheduling circles as the default answer to the question of how to compare two XER files.
So is it still the best option? That is a fair question worth answering.
What Claim Digger Does
Claim Digger is a comparison utility that Oracle included with older versions of Primavera P6. Load two .xer or .xml files and it produces a text report listing activities that were added, deleted, or modified between the two versions.
At its core, it answers one question: what changed between Schedule A and Schedule B? For basic schedule auditing that is useful — and for many years it was the only readily available tool that did it at all.
Where Claim Digger Still Works Well
Claim Digger is still a reasonable choice in specific situations.
- For small, straightforward schedules with a few hundred activities, the text output is manageable.
- For occasional quick sanity checks where you just need to confirm nothing major shifted, it gets the job done.
- It is free and familiar to schedulers who have been using P6 for years.
If your projects are relatively simple and your comparison needs are occasional, Claim Digger may be all you need.
Where You May Want More
As projects grow more complex, and as the stakes around schedule documentation rise, a few limitations become relevant.
Output format. Claim Digger produces plain text. On a schedule with 600 activities across multiple WBS levels, reading through that output is a slow manual process. There is no filtering, no color coding, and no easy way to share the results with an owner or project manager in a professional format.
Logic changes. Changes to predecessor and successor relationships are among the most consequential things that can happen to a schedule — a modified logic link can shift the critical path without moving a single date in an obvious way. Detailed relationship comparison is an area where schedulers often want more visibility than a basic text report provides.
Version history. Claim Digger compares two files. For a project with 24 monthly updates, that means running comparisons individually with no running picture of cumulative drift over time. Tracking how the schedule has evolved across all its revisions requires something more systematic.
Claims documentation. If a project heads toward a delay claim, the documentation standard rises considerably. A plain text comparison output typically requires significant reformatting before it is suitable for that purpose.
What Modern Schedule Comparison Looks Like
Tools built specifically for schedule comparison address these gaps. Change Inspector, for example, compares P6 XER and XML files and produces color-coded, filterable reports across seven comparison tabs — activities, dates, relationships, WBS, resources, a visual Gantt diff, and schedule options. Logic changes are shown with full predecessor and successor detail, relationship type, and lag values before and after. Results export directly to Excel in a format ready for owner reporting or claims documentation.
The comparison runs entirely in your browser. Your XER files never leave your computer.
If you are running the DCMA 14-point schedule health check on your files, Change Inspector handles that as well — with adjustable thresholds, drill-down violation tables, and an Excel export of the full scorecard.
The Bottom Line
Claim Digger is a solid starting point and it still has its place for simple, occasional comparisons. For schedulers managing complex projects where the comparison results carry real consequences — owner reporting, subcontractor oversight, claims documentation — purpose-built schedule comparison software gives you the visibility and documentation quality that a basic text report cannot match.