Look at Kidasa software's "Milestones". Find the samples on their website and take a look at the architectural project ones.
One very nice feature is that you can have more than one activity on a single progress bar. You could, for example, show the entire sequence of permit processing on one bar. Start, end, symbols are customizable. Lots of choices for other graphics, too.
And, you can just select a pdf-generating program as the "printer", and, voila! [note, you can do that with most any program that has a printer interface]
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Joel Niemi AIA
Snohomish WA
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