Welcome to the Board!
I agree with Norie. While you can recreate some of Project's functionality in Excel, the only time I've ever had a need is when other users didn't have it. Excel certainly won't handle large, complex projects as well and will be primarily limited to small tasks.
If your company has Project accessible (many don't) then I'd go towards it. There's no point in wasting your time (or your employer's) trying to recreate something that's had years of development effort put into it and works fine.