Software for engineering consultancies, built around revision and issue
Engineering consultancies produce two things: calculations, and the documents that carry them. The calculations happen in specialist software that nobody should try to replace. The documents — issued, reviewed, commented on, superseded, and billed against a fee — are where consultancies lose time, and where almost nothing is purpose-built for them.
What a consultancy has to run
- 01Projects with a fee, stages and deliverables owed to a lead consultant
- 02Technical review as a recorded step, with comments and a resolution
- 03Drawing and document issue with a transmittal record
- 04Staff time and cost against the fee, before the project ends
- 05Coordination with the architect and the contractor without email archaeology
- 06Invoicing tied to stages, and a ledger that reflects it
What actually changes on the Monday after
- Which revision went to the architect is a question for the person who sent it
- Review comments live in emails and half of them are answered
- A superseded drawing is still in somebody's folder, and gets built
- Fees are invoiced by stage but nobody knows the stage's staff cost
- Every issue is logged — what, to whom, which revision, when
- Every revision carries who changed it, when and why
- Superseded drawings are marked superseded, everywhere, at once
- Stage fees against staff time, on the same project record
Review is the deliverable nobody models
For a consultancy, the review comment is as much an output as the drawing. It has an author, a severity, a response and a close-out — and when it lives in a PDF markup or an email chain, closing it out becomes an afternoon of searching. Recording review against the revision it concerns, rather than in an inbox, is the single biggest change most consultancies can make.
The consultancy sits between two other firms
You receive from the architect and issue to the contractor, or the reverse. That means your document control has to be defensible to people who do not use your system — which is what a transmittal record is for. See drawing management.
One product with the architects and the contractors
Engineers use Ofivio AEC, the same product as architects and contractors. Studio holds the drawing sets by discipline, the revisions and the transmittals a consultancy issues; Manager holds the projects, approvals and workload; Finance holds the stage invoices. There is no separate engineering product, and a consultancy that also produces architectural work runs both from one workspace.
What it does not do
Ofivio AEC is the delivery and commercial side of the practice. It does not run structural analysis, load calculations, MEP sizing or energy modelling, and it should not — those tools are specialised, mature, and correctly separate.
The three fee traps in consultancy work
- The extended programme. The fee was agreed for a nine-month project now in month twenty. The scope did not change; the calendar did. Without staff cost tracked against the fee, nobody notices until the project closes at a loss.
- The review that never ends. Comments issued, responded to, re-issued, re-commented. Each round is small; six rounds is a month of somebody’s time that was never priced.
- The coordination nobody scoped. Sitting between an architect and a contractor produces work that belongs to neither, and it lands on the consultancy by default.
What a consultancy should actually measure
Utilisation says whether people are busy. Cost against fee, per project, says whether being busy was worth it — and a fully booked team delivering under-priced work is a firm losing money efficiently. The second number requires staff to carry a cost, which is why the roster and the project have to be in one system rather than in HR and a spreadsheet.
Who this is not for
If you are on this list, Ofivio is the wrong purchase and we would rather you know now than in month three.
- Firms looking for analysis, calculation or simulation software
- Consultancies mandated onto a client's own common data environment
- Single-discipline sole traders with two projects
- Anyone needing BIM federation and clash detection
The products behind this
Questions people actually ask
Is there a separate product for engineers?
Does it integrate with our analysis software?
Can we track fee against staff cost?
Keep reading
- From concept to handover: the design stages, and why your software should know themDesign
- Drawing revision management — version history is not revision controlDrawings
- Project management software for architects: why generic tools lose to the workComparisons
- Ofivio AEC, explained: one product for architects, engineers and contractorsProducts
Open a workspace and try it on your own work
A free trial with your own projects in it tells you more in an afternoon than any comparison table. Nothing is charged during the trial.