Project management for engineering consultancies and design firms, built around your own stages. An enquiry becomes a costed quotation, the purchase order raises the first invoice, drawings go through client revisions and authority approval, and the final invoice is raised when approval arrives. Each team sees what is waiting for them, and the client can check progress at any time.
The problem
The enquiry arrives by email. Costing is done in a spreadsheet that only one person understands, the quotation is a Word file with a revision number in its name, and the purchase order is somewhere in a thread. Drawings go back and forth with the client, and nobody counts the revisions until the fee has been spent.
Finance learns that authority approval has arrived when someone remembers to tell them, so the final invoice goes out late. When the client calls to ask where things stand, the answer takes three phone calls.
How it works
The stages below are set up for fire and life-safety design, where drawings need authority approval. Yours are set up to match your practice.
Business development
Project, owner, architect, building type and an area statement floor by floor.
Costing
The fee is worked out from the area and building type, and adjusted where needed.
Finance
Finance approves the quotation or sends it back. Each approved version is saved as a PDF.
Business development
The client’s order is uploaded, and the mobilization invoice is raised and emailed.
Engineering
Plot documents, coordinates and the site boundary are checked against the order.
Engineering
Marked-up drawings go to the client, round by round, until they are approved.
Design engineers
Final drawings are submitted to the authority, and the approved set is uploaded.
Finance
The final invoice is raised when approval is confirmed, and payment is recorded.
What it controls
The quotation is costed from floor area, building type, engineer rates and your minimum fees. Any override is visible to finance.
Each approved version of the quotation is saved as a PDF with its revision number.
The mobilization invoice follows the purchase order and the final invoice follows authority approval, each emailed as a PDF.
Each round of client comments has its own set of drawings. After a second rejection, finance must approve before more work is done.
When a stage is approved or sent back, the team that owns the next stage gets an email with a link to the project.
The client enters the project reference on a public page and sees which stage the project has reached. No login is needed.
Plot number, region, coordinates and the site boundary drawn on a map sit with the client’s documents.
Invoices awaiting payment and the value invoiced each month, from the same records.
Costing figures are shown only to business development, costing and finance. Engineers see scope, documents and drawings.
Drawing office
For teams that produce drawings in volume, each project carries a drawing register by discipline: civil, structural, electrical, plumbing, fire, HVAC and MEP coordination. Every drawing has estimated drafting hours, a planned submission date and an approval date worked out from the project’s lead time.
Draftsmen clock in and out on each drawing, so hours are known per drawing and per revision, and a draftsman can’t be clocked in on two drawings at once. A live project report shows every drawing with its revision, its logged hours and its status.
What changes
| Email and spreadsheets | Fieldmaster workflow | |
|---|---|---|
| Costing | Email and spreadsheets A spreadsheet one person maintains. | Fieldmaster workflow Calculated from your rates and rules, with every override on record. |
| Where a project stands | Email and spreadsheets Whoever handled it last knows. | Fieldmaster workflow The current stage and its owner, visible to the team and to the client. |
| Drawing revisions | Email and spreadsheets Counted afterwards, if at all. | Fieldmaster workflow Each round recorded, with finance approval once the limit is passed. |
| Invoicing | Email and spreadsheets Raised when someone remembers. | Fieldmaster workflow Raised by the workflow at the purchase order and at authority approval. |
| Documents | Email and spreadsheets Spread across inboxes and shared folders. | Fieldmaster workflow Client documents, quotations, drawings and approvals on the project record. |
FAQ
Software that carries an engineering or design project from the first enquiry to the last payment: the scope and fee, the drawings and their revisions, the approvals from the client and the authorities, and the invoices. For a consultancy, the value is in knowing which stage every project has reached, who holds it, and whether the work done is still covered by the fee.
Any engineering, architecture or design practice whose projects follow a repeatable path from enquiry to approved deliverables: fire and life-safety, MEP, structural and civil design, and similar work. The stages, teams, fee rules and documents are set up to match how your practice runs.
No. It does not draw Gantt charts or calculate a critical path, and it is not a CAD or BIM tool. It runs the stages, approvals, documents, drawing register, hours and invoices of each project. Firms that plan large construction programmes keep their scheduling tool for that.
From figures you maintain yourself: rates per engineer type, time per square metre, weights per building type, minimum fees per phase and fixed costs such as site visits. The estimator enters the building and its areas, picks the phases in scope, and the fee is worked out. A price can be overridden, and the override stays visible.
No. It raises invoices, emails them as PDFs and records payments against each project, so you can see what is owed. Your accounts stay in your accounting system.
Each round of comments is recorded with its own drawings. Once the number of rounds you allow is passed, the project is routed to finance for approval before the engineers do more work.
Yes. A public page shows the current stage for a project reference, without a login.
Yes. Supervision and inspection visits can be recorded on the phone in the Fieldmaster Pocket app, with photos and the GPS location, against the same project.
A typical app is live in 10 to 18 working days. We build it around your stages, fee rules and document templates.
