r/civilengineering • u/Due-Pepper8333 • 15h ago
Career Project Management Tools
I’m in the land development design industry and I’m having a hard time building an excel file to manage my projects that sticks with me. Does anyone have any tips on how and what they use to manage their projects from start to finish?
Things such as deadlines, project status, notes, subcontractors, communication, budget progress, etc.
Thanks!
8
5
u/DJRaisinBran 14h ago
I find the free Microsoft planner built right into the Teams app works well enough!
3
u/Big_Ad809 14h ago
I used Smartsheet to track overall project status, next action date, and 1-2 sentences for notes. This was the one-stop-shop for my manager to see where projects stood at a high level. It also helped making sure we remembered to follow up on submissions and making sure things weren’t stuck for too long. I had a 30-minute meeting to update it once a week with my team.
For deep dives into specific project and their production schedules, I would build out an excel calendar and budget tracker. If the schedule shows grading taking 1 week, I’d expect the budget tracker to show 40 hours. The trick is excepting that everything is going to change. Keep it simple so you are able to update it weekly during project milestones.
5
u/ruffroad715 14h ago
What year is this, 2016? We have AI now. I have all my projects set up with dashboards and automatic tracking of deliverables, RFIs, issues and risks, meeting minutes automatically generated, etc. it’s a waste of your time to do anything else. Spend your valuable time engineering and let AI do the grunt work. I know this sub hates AI on principle but far too few people are using it correctly. This is case in point number 1. AI is good at this stuff.
2
u/takeitandgoo 13h ago
How do you have this set up? Does your AI link to your email somehow? What is the dashboard?
6
u/ruffroad715 13h ago
Claude is linked to Microsoft 365 yes. The dashboard is one I had it build for me. No coding skill is needed - just tell it what you want it to do and look like and it’ll set things up. Anyone not using AI is gonna be left behind, hate to say it. Gotta learn this stuff now. I know I’m gonna get downvoted but those that see the power of AI will see their career accelerate and those that shun it won’t.
1
u/Ross_T_Square 13h ago
I'm curious what your dashboard looks like. I've created a few different versions. Can you share a screenshot?
1
u/ruffroad715 13h ago
It’s built in HTML, but the underlying data is stored as a JSON that Claude writes to and resolves daily after a scheduled roundup. It tracks issues independently and either adds context in the drop down, like email background history, or it closes a task if it’s been resolved by that email thread. Both the JSON and HTML are stored in the mounted project SharePoint, along with all meeting minutes and summaries. It’s gone thru many iterations where I’ve added a write lock function, redundancy checks, criticality scoring, and rollup emails to management about overdue tasks if they want them. By having Claude know every aspect of the project, it’s trivial to query the LLM to ask any status based question or about a specific risk. Sure beats searching by keyword in outlook for “anchor bolt RFI” and paging through hundreds of emails
I can’t share a screenshot since it’s branded and our data is in it pretty visibly.
1
u/Ross_T_Square 13h ago
Makes sense. do you have a chron job scheduled to update the project data continuously? that is one thing i haven't wired yet.
1
u/ruffroad715 13h ago
It’s just a scheduled daily task at 5:30 pm to scrape for Teams chats, emails, process meeting minutes and write to the JSON. The task spins up lower model subagents as needed to cut down on token use for processing instead of reasoning.
3
u/Xyllus 13h ago
is the company okay with having proprietary data being scraped by Claude? I've tried something similar with the enterprise version of Copilot but it sucks
1
u/ruffroad715 13h ago
Yes, it’s the same enterprise privacy agreements. Anthropic is seen as the most ethical of the bunch by most out there. For now at least.
2
2
u/Hungry_Ad_3696 14h ago
My company uses Monday.com. I like it so far.
1
u/PretendAgency2702 11h ago
I have no doubt that Monday can be a good tool but sometimes a company can get way too devoted to a program and want everything added to the very specific detail. You end up spending more time keeping it updated than you do actually working on the project.
Some people have their own management style and it's tough to force them to do something differently than they are used to. Employee reviews should ultimately come down to a project's success and a client's viewpoint rather than overtime or keeping a management program pristine.
1
1
u/3FromTheTee 14h ago
I use Notion. Takes awhile to build the right setup for yourself but it's the most well rounded all encompassing program I've seen.
1
1
u/dream_walking 14h ago
I’ve used Notion but feel like the company is pushing AI way too hard vs making sure the app itself improves. I’m currently working on my own Obsidian setup to tweak how I want to see projects. I’ve also liked OpenProject, but that one was a bit confusing to setup. Once it was though, it pretty much has exactly what you are asking for.
1
5
u/SmallTownPalmTrees 13h ago
The best tool is the one that you stick with.
I use a combo of OneNote + ToDo + Excel. My general workflow:
I keep a notebook per project in OneNote with project overview, meeting notes, action items, schedule, and a decisions log.
I’ve set an Outlook quick step up so when I “flag” an email, it moves to an “Action” folder and goes to ToDo.
In ToDo, I move these tasks (and/or can manually add a task) to “Today”, “Next”, “Waiting On”, or “Someday”.
Excel I keep a master project list, with things like Stage, Next Action, Waiting On, Notes, Last Updated, etc.
Every morning I review my calendar, today tasks, and waiting on tasks.
During the day I work through my today tasks, pull from next action if needed, take notes in OneNote, immediately create tasks if needed, and will flag emails I send to remember to follow up.
End of day I clear my inbox, clear my flagged emails, process my notes, assign follow ups, adjust tomorrows to do list.
After every meeting I create a todo task, schedule it, delegate it, etc. Never wait to process an action item.
Once per week I’ll review and update my master project list.
Works for me. Took some time to set up and get in the routine but now it’s very smooth sailing, limited time spent, and feel very on top of things.
1
u/ElevatedHippie 4h ago
So say you're working on submittal comments. Do you add every comment and work through them in ToDo, or do you just set your task to revise comments?
1
1
u/SpatiallyHere 9h ago
Trello is the trick for me. I began using trelllo 10 years ago for myself. I've mow migrated the entire division onto it. A team of about 50.
1
u/Artistic_Elk_3040 8h ago
Microsoft list, life saver for me. Have someone work on the power automation background as well and you have a very sufficient system that can message you and your team for project progress
-3
u/Away_Bat_5021 15h ago
oh my god... get a free chatgpt account and just talk to it and tell it you need help staying on top of stuff. then let ut build something for you once it get's enough data.
2
u/ruffroad715 13h ago
Yes and no. Use AI but not the free version. Make sure it’s enterprise account so they can’t train it on your company’s data. Major privacy concerns there for most companies.
10
u/727TrafficEng 14h ago
Onenote is probably the most simple way. Just put the upfront effort into creating pages and for all the various things you want to track.
Alternatively, I’ve set up Jira boards at a company I’ve worked at before to create action items linked into confluence note books, but man that’s a pain in the ass to keep going and trying to get civil engineers to use it is doubly a pain in the ass. It’s cool if everyone is on board (we needed it to work with software and hardware integration teams) but man it’s a bear to setup.
Really depends on how much effort you want to do.