IC Project tools
As in any industry, so it is in architecture. Working in an architecture and design office has its specific characteristics, and organizing all the processes in the right way may turn out to be the long sought and hidden key to success. Success that will ensure better functioning of the studio, and thus increase the turnover of the entire business. Do you know how to do this? The solution in this case will be the implementation of a dedicated tool for the architectural industry - IC Project tool, which will organize the work of your team, ensure the correct circulation of information, improve the management of project documentation, and offer the manager a mass of mechanisms to improve the ongoing control of work and calculation of profitability of projects.
IC Project, as a tool created for an architectural studio
IC Project is a Polish tool that was created to better manage projects. Projects of which we have a whole lot in the architectural industry. Over time, it has been improved with many additional functionalities that make it comprehensive for the overall organization of work in a design studio. As of this moment, IC Project is one of the most widely used systems in architectural and design offices all over the country. However, it is worth noting right away that we mean offices that want to develop on a daily basis and strive to improve the functioning of the entire studio. Unfortunately, all the time on the market we have quite a few companies in the industry that prefer to stay with their habits and thus function on Excel or local files - we have absolutely nothing to do with this, although it is because of this organization of work that the studio will never complete more projects and thus will not make a milestone towards its development.
IC PROJECT
© IC PROJECT
Very important with any tool is technology, and IC Project is a tool that has been based on the best possible technology for creating such systems. It is a cloud-based solution, so everyone on your team will have access to all key data just by accessing the web. Of course, you don't have to worry about the security of your data, because it is protected with the best possible security features. Exactly the ones used in banks, so imagine their level. Analyzing the whole tool, what immediately catches the eye is a very nice and at the same time pleasant interface. Without a doubt, this is not a program that attacks with severity, and more with a lot of color. Feedback that is easily drawn from people in the industry proves that architects and other office workers most simply want to work in this solution. Why? Because it is a very functional program, easy to use and, above all, intuitive on a daily basis. This is very important.
Combining effective project management with task-based work mechanisms will increase the productivity of your team - create the right environment for work
Project work is the everyday functioning of any architectural studio. If, on the other hand, we talk about projects, we think at the same time about the schedules of these projects. In order to improve the productivity of the entire office, it is necessary to take care of the effective management of the entire project process at the grassroots - just what does it de facto consist of? First of all, you need to make sure that the structure of projects is properly dissected - defining stages, task groups and individual tasks. If we do this, we can plug in personnel resources, such as our architects or designers. Thus, all unwritten tasks in the project are delegated, have specific deadlines, as well as all the necessary specifications for the task. After all, the process we face in our studios every day seems simple and obvious, while if we go deeper, do we really have the right tools to manage it efficiently?
Graphic from IC Project's Facebook profile
© IC PROJECT
A tool dedicated to this process includes IC Project, which allows you to effectively manage project and task work. Thus,you add your projects, define milestones, separate tasks, and delegate work to your team accordingly. This is a tool that provides all the required mechanisms automatically, without any additional combinations in spreadsheets - you can forget about it. IC Project will always inform the designer about a new task, remind about an upcoming deadline, define the conditions for the task, and send information to the project manager about its completion. But most importantly, each person on your team will receive a visualization of the work and processes, thus a full clear flow of information. Imagine this, everyone in the team knows what they need to complete and for when. You, on the other hand, control the workflow and know where you are. By providing the right tools for yourself, as well as for your subordinates, you will see how the productivity of the entire team grows from week to week. Growing productivity means higher turnover - is that what we want?
Create project schedules automatically, manage visually - scheduling, a key aspect in any architecture studio
Admit it, the schedule is one of the most frequently opened documents when implementing projects. Creating a proper schedule is quite a challenge - you have to plan everything properly on time, put everything together, anticipate shifts, and finally present and discuss it with the right people. What if the schedule was created automatically based on the structure of your project? Remember the aspect with dividing the project into phases, and listing the individual tasks? Using IC Project, you get an automatic combination of processes - by adding the project structure, your schedule is created simultaneously. This way, you don't have to do any extra work, and with each project running in the tool, you have its visual schedule available. As befits a tool based on the best technology, this is a dynamic schedule that offers a ton of functionality.
Graphic from www.icproject.com
© IC PROJECT
Let's start with the fact that IC Project shows the structure of your project, that is, stages, task groups or individual tasks, and next to all this is shown in a timely manner on a timeline. Using this solution, you have two different yet key views of your project. Going further, from the scheduler, you can intuitively drag & drop each element of your project - this is an extremely well-liked way, so you can put the whole project on time in just a few tens of seconds. A few moves and you're done. The third aspect worth noting is the creation of dependencies between project components. Admit it, you are well aware of the situation that if we delay the acquisition of documents then we will not move with the tasks of our designers. You can automate all this on the timeline, delaying one, will affect the automatic postponement of the next. Or even the whole project - you decide the rules. Last but not least, you need to mention milestones, which will always clearly signal potential variables on the project, deviations and delays shown, or the ability to export the created chart in IC Project to all the most popular external file formats. Thus, you will discuss the entire schedule in a meeting with your team, present it to your client or subcontractors. You have a whole lot of possibilities, just bet on the IC Project tool, which was created to help you in your daily processes.
Gain the ability to better manage your design studio - how to price, determine profitability and calculate the cost of your projects?
Effectively managing any architectural studio is quite a challenge. Virtually all of the projects conducted are usually external projects, and therefore carried out for our external clients. Thus, a project needs to be properly priced at the start, during the course of the project we need to gain information about our real costs, and at the end we need to determine its profitability and real profit for our company. Without a proper work structure, this is definitely not easy. Managing an office on approximate valuations, approximate costs, and in the end profitability with a large margin of error is not management - it's faulty data that falsifies what we do every day. So how do we correct this and gain opportunities to make the entire studio function much better?
Again, the solution will be IC Project, which is not only a system for running projects and task work, but also a great solution for all managers. We've already mentioned that this tool allows you to manage your project properly, and an entire visual and timely schedule is automatically created for each project. However, this is not all that the developers offer in the functional connection. Each project with its full structure additionally receives a full financial module, which allows managers to, among other things, create an initial cost calculation, earnings, and during the course of the project to control rising costs. At the end, we will always see a clear and transparent financial result in IC Project, which will be nothing but a very accurate determination of the project's profitability.
Graphic from www.icproject.com
© IC PROJECT
The functioning of the entire financial module has been meticulously thought out, analyzed and implemented into this comprehensive tool. In any architectural studio, it is a huge challenge to calculate the real cost of a given employee. However, based on the tool, which is used for project and task management, you have to admit that we now see some light at the tunnel. In IC Project, every office gets full time measurement and reporting functionality to use. If we just delegate to designers or architects the appropriate tasks, they can measure or manually report how much time they have spent in real terms on each task. Thus, the manager will receive special reports and will know at any time how much real working time a particular project has actually consumed.
You have to admit that this already sounds good, to say the least. However, that's not all. If we go one step further and hook up an hourly rate to our employee, and he performs a report on the time spent, you will see his cost. The amount of his time spent on tasks in the project will automatically multiply by the hourly rate, and you will see this in the financial module on a cost done basis in the project. If you have been fuzzy with this data until now, in IC Project you will get special mechanisms and work automations that will make your work easier.
IC Project - a tool that will change the work in your project office.
I say: check it out!
As you can see, IC Project is a tool that has very high capabilities. However, what has been described above is not all, because in this system you will find, among other things, various ways to better manage project documentation, opportunities to organize work with your contractors or a whole communication environment together with a calendar for your team. The key thing in all this, however, is that by analyzing the entire system you can come to a concrete conclusion - this is a tool that perfectly fits the specifics of architectural studio processes. The number of offices currently operating this solution is impressive, while looking at what IC Project can change in a design office, it is completely unsurprising.
Reading about all the processes, you probably form an impression about the huge and expensive software - bug, bug, bug. This is very agile, fast, and extremely inexpensive software. For example, a year of IC Project for an office of 10 people together with full support costs just over 2 thousand zlotys. At the same time, it's intuitive to use - that's not even our opinion, but that of people in the industry who work in IC Project every day and can't now imagine going back to the demons of the past. If you want to give it a try, check it out. Visit IC Project and test the entire system for free, and preferably we recommend you schedule a dedicated presentation with the system's developers - this is by far the most effective way to learn about the solution. Then you will assess its real usefulness and the translation of functionality to your office.
For more information, visit the company's IC Project page on the PdA portal
and on the IC Project website.
