Software Solution for Civil Engineering Companies

The following article shows how it is possible to structure VIP Task Manager Professional applied to the needs of the real estate development company, specifically for civil engineering companies. The companies involving in this functional area strive for providing its clients with high quality engineering and design services that cover the following aspects:

• Land Surveying:
  • boundary survey
  • cadastral survey
  • topographic survey
  • plot plan survey
  • subdivision survey, etc.
• Land Planning:  
  • subdivision land platting and design
  • site layout
  • site plans, etc.
• Engineering Services:
  • site and subdivision engineering
  • water quality and storm water management
  • hydrologic and hydraulic design, etc.

Clients of property management companies include real estate developers, building contractors, industries and others in private or public sector.

Now let’s consider a specific example of Civil Engineering company that needs to manage projects associated with land platting services and how the company of that kind can get the most value out of VIP Task Manager Professional. A typical Civil Engineering company provides services for clients who develop land or communities into residential, commercial, industrial or a mixed use subdivisions. The product of civil engineering firm is a subdivision plat (also called as cadastral map or plan). It is a map of specific land area subdivided into lots with boundaries.  
To be effective civil engineering company needs software solution that can fulfill the specification with the following requirements:

Overall structure
- track small and large scale engineering projects by the completion of their many tasks
Workflow
- provide a dashboard with the current statuses of tasks and projects
Work team management
- list tasks and projects for one project manager and for all project managers
Customization
- provide customized look of projects by community, customer, assigned staff member
File Storage
- attach documents (subdivision plans) to projects and tasks
Reporting
- produce quick customized reports that list all projects along with information related to them

VIP Task Manager Professional is a task and project management tool capable to meet the above requirements.

Overall structure

VIP Task Manager Professional can structure a database to keep a wide variety of projects on track. Considering the specifics of Civil Engineering department that deals with plats, VIP Task Manager Professional lets setup each task as a Plat under task groups as Communities

Task Tree with projects as Communities

Task List with tasks as Plats

Workflow

Everyday tasks of Civil Engineering department usually follow specific workflows. Plats need to be managed according to numerous land development regulations. Before the preliminary plat may proceed to start construction process a real estate developer should prepare general concept plan and topographic survey of subdivision. When preliminary plat is approved, the final plat is prepared and submitted to Register of Deeds. Sometimes a relatively simple task related to a plat can go through two or more layers of permitting procedures to be approved by different governmental agencies. 

To keep all its tasks on track the company needs a dashboard that shows a status of each plat (or task). VIP Task Manager Professional lets organize numerous workflows to track the status of each plat (or task), for example by the plat phase: Preliminary, Submission, Final and Recordation.

Work team management

A lot of staff members are involved in the process of approving final plat. To respond quickly and efficiently to the needs of customers the company needs the software product that allows to pass out the tasks, update status on each task and make comments for upper management staff. VIP Task Manager is the tool that allows real time communication between staff.

Comments panel

Notifications panel

In terms of work team management VIP Task Manager allows to list tasks and projects for one project manager, team of project managers or for all project managers using Task List- or Task Tree -Filter panel

Tasks displayed per particular project manager

Tasks displayed per team of project managers

Customization

To meet the requirements of Civil Engineering company the software product should - provide powerful customization options. To track projects by community, assigned project manager, customer, customer information, specific dates, etc. you can create custom fields of different types.  
To link plats to specific Community, Customer, customer contact information and specific staff member it is possible to create custom field with type “String”

To track plats by date staff members can create custom fields with such types as “Date”, “Time”, “Date&Time”

Projects associated with plats can be grouped in various ways depending on how the company need to customize the look of task view
For example, if you are program manager who coordinates team of project managers, you can group plats under Community and staff members responsible for Division

File Storage

Civil Engineering company deals with different disciplines such as construction, land-surveying, architecture, law and accounting. Staff members needs to manage different documents, mainly subdivision plans that go with tasks. VIP Task Manager Professional is the tool that can assist civil engineering companies in keeping all documents in one place.

Reporting

VIP Task Manager Professional offers good reporting capabilities to fit specific company needs.  It is possible to run one report that lists the status of all tasks associated with plats by Customer, Community, Project Manager, Plat Phase, dates of Preliminary and Final Plats, etc.

You can customize the look of the report to show tasks or projects given to particular staff member over a day, week, month or any other time span you select. It is possible to show grouped and sorted tasks, tasks filtered by any default field or custom field, include Notes to your printout report.

Report on tasks in statuses “Preliminary Plat” and “Submission” (along with Notes) assigned to Project Manager