The Best 5 Engineering Project Management Software [2024]

When managing complex engineering projects, having the right project management software is essential for keeping everything organized and on track. Engineering firms often deal with long-term, multi-phase projects that require careful planning, resource allocation, and documentation. Choosing the right software can streamline these processes, enhance collaboration, and ensure projects are delivered on time and within budget. 

In this article, we examine what features you should look for in project management software and the best options on the market.

Project Management Software Features Your Engineering Firm Must Look for

For engineering firms, managing projects in phases is crucial. Breaking down large, often multi-year projects into smaller, manageable phases simplifies both billing and workflow. Using project management software that has this flexibility helps your team stay organized and on track.

A document management feature is equally important. Searching for documents is a waste of employees’ time. Storing all project-related documents—such as reports, permits, and specifications—in one place alongside tasks can save time for everyone involved.

Contacts, clients, and vendors should be stored in one centralized location. A CRM that is integrated into your project management software is essential. It should allow you to manage all of your contacts in one location, while also providing detailed insights into activities related to each contact.

Task assignment is another key feature. Being able to assign tasks and receive notifications when they’re completed eliminates the need to constantly follow up. Instead, use project management software to track progress directly and efficiently.

Finally, ensure the chosen software includes strong communication features. Fast, efficient communication among team members boosts productivity and helps ensure on-time project delivery. Choose a solution that fosters collaboration to keep your team aligned.

The following factors should be considered when different project management software options are analyzed.

• Project complexity: Whether your company typically handles simple, short projects or complex, long projects should be assessed, as this will affect the type of software needed.
• Team size: The size of your team should be evaluated, as it will impact how robust the software needs to be and its cost.
• Specific features: The way projects are currently managed should be considered. Features like Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and resource management could be beneficial if their use is understood.

What Integrations Should an Engineering PM Software Have?

Integrating your project management software with communication tools can be highly beneficial. For example, if the business uses Microsoft Teams, linking it with your project management platform can help send automatic reminders about pending tasks, keeping everyone on track.

When a separate app is used for time tracking, connecting both tools is also useful. By linking the time spent on each task directly within the project management software, managers gain better insight into productivity and can improve future time estimates.

Finally, integrating accounting software adds even more value, especially with an all-in-one solution like Aldoa, which includes time tracking. Seamlessly link tasks to hours worked, create invoices, and send them directly to QuickBooks. This streamlines the entire process, from tracking to billing.

The Best 5 Project Management Software Designed and Built for Engineers

1 - Aldoa

Brief overview: Aldoa is an all-in-one project management software for engineers. It includes task assignment and management, invoicing, budgeting tools, timesheets, and a line-by-line integration with QuickBooks. With all these features together in one, easy-to-use, comprehensive software your whole firm gains agility, accurate data, precision, and efficiency.

For tasks, project managers can assign tasks to team members and remain a watcher to monitor the task and receive automatic notifications on its progress. That task can also be linked to the timesheet to understand how long each task takes to complete accurately. This granularity improves the analysis of time spent on each phase of the project.

Aldoa also provides a wiki for each project, team members can share and access key documents and notes to improve collaboration and save time.

Key features:

• Task management
• Invoicing
• Budgeting
• Timesheets
• Integration with QuickBooks

Focus: Aldoa was built for engineers and environmental consultants.

2 - Monograph

Brief overview: Monograph aims to centralize project management and improve financial visibility. It enables you to assign tasks, track project progress, manage hours, generate invoices, accept payments, and view reports and dashboards. Monograph also has an integration with QuickBooks to improve bookkeeping. 

Features:

• Assign tasks
• Manage hours
• Generate invoices
• Accept payments
• View reports and dashboards

Focus: Monograph’s two main audiences are architects and engineers.

3 - OpenProject

Brief overview: European company, OpenProject, is an open-source project management software. It is a highly secure solution with collaborative features including Gantt charts, boards with tasks, dashboards, pre-made templates, and timesheets. OpenProject has a free plan that you can use.

Features:

• Project management templates
• Task management
• Dashboards
• Timesheets
• See phase dependencies

Focus: OpenProject appears to focus more on IT projects, but they do have capabilities for engineers.

4 - Project Manager

Brief overview: Project Manager enables the automation of workflows, view dashboards to track progress, use different project management templates to understand how the project is progressing, and manages hours in one platform. 

Features:

• Real-time dashboards
• Team chats
• Manage tasks
• Integrate with other tools
• Project calendars

Focus: Project Manager focuses on construction and manufacturing companies.

5 - Asana

Brief overview: Asana is one of the most popular project management tools on the market. It is generalized, so it doesn’t have specific features for engineers. But it has a broad range of templates and makes it easy to manage, assign, and discuss tasks. Create workflows, rules, and task dependencies to manage projects easier. 

Features:

• Task management
• Different templates
• Create forms
• Manage goals
• Integrations

Focus: Asana is a broad project management tool, it’s often used by digital companies and startups.

See The Unique Ways Aldoa Can Help Your Engineering Firm

Choose the best engineering project management software to improve team productivity, data accuracy, and client satisfaction. 

With Aldoa, you have a comprehensive management tool to make finances, employees, tasks, budgeting, and bookkeeping easier. Ensure that you meet all deadlines, stay within budget, and improve business profitability with Aldoa. Book your free demo today.