Build an engineering system around your drawings, your sites and your fee stages.
An engineering office runs on two things that rarely sit together. The drawing register is one. The fee is the other.
Revisions go out, site visits happen, a contractor rings at nine at night with a query, and the bill for all of it is reconstructed from memory a quarter later. Generic project software handles tasks well and drawings badly. It usually does not know what a revision is, or that a fee was agreed in stages.
At GullySystem it is done the other way about. The drawing register, the transmittal, the inspection report and the stage bill sit in one place, with costing that counts man-hours against the fee that covered them.
Engineering firms we can build for.
Four people doing structural design, or a fabrication company with a shop floor and a commissioning team. The work you sell decides the scope, not the word on the board. If you wire buildings or install solar plants for a living, the electrical contractors page and the solar companies page are written for that work.
- Structural design consultancies
- Civil engineering consultants
- Engineering wings inside architectural practices
- MEP consultants
- Geotechnical and soil investigation firms
- Steel detailing offices
- Structural fabrication companies
- Machine building companies
- Industrial plant engineering firms
- Piping and process engineering firms
- EPC contractors
- Project management consultants
- Survey and investigation firms
- Water and environmental engineering firms
- Testing and inspection firms
- Installation and commissioning companies
- Engineering design offices working for overseas clients
- Multi-discipline consultancies
The modules, and what each one covers.
Nothing here is a fixed package. Each module is built, left out or changed to match how your organisation already works.
What a project record holds
One file per project, opened at the enquiry and still useful when the stability certificate is asked for.
- Project code and name
- Client and contact people
- Site address
- Scope of work
- Discipline
- Agreed fee and fee basis
- Stages and milestones
- Lead engineer
- Team assigned
- Drawings issued
- Site visits made
- Queries raised and closed
- Bills raised and received
- Status
Enquiries and quotations
Most engineering firms quote more than they win, and the losing quotations are worth keeping.
- Enquiry source
- Client and referring architect
- Scope discussed
- Fee basis, whether lump sum, per square foot or per tonne
- Rate and quantity assumptions
- Exclusions
- Number of revisions the fee covers
- Validity
- Revised quotations
- Approval and work order
- Lost enquiries and the reason
Because the exclusions sit inside the quotation record, the argument about what the fee covered has a document behind it.
Tenders
For firms that bid, the paperwork that decides whether a bid is even opened.
- Tender notice and due date
- Documents to be submitted
- Earnest money deposit
- Technical bid
- Commercial bid
- BOQ rates
- Pre-bid queries
- Submission record
- Result
- Rates quoted against rates won
Fee stages
The stages your agreement names, in the order it names them.
- Concept
- Preliminary design
- Detailed design
- Good for construction drawings
- Site support
- Completion
Stage names differ from firm to firm, so they are set up as yours rather than ours.
Drawings and revisions
The register that decides whether the right sheet is on site.
- Drawing number and title
- Discipline
- Revision letter or number
- Revision date and reason
- Prepared, checked and approved by
- Status
- Sheet size and scale
- Native file and PDF
- Superseded versions
- Bar bending schedules
- General arrangement drawings
- As-built drawings
An older revision stays in the record but is marked superseded, so a contractor working from last month’s print can be shown exactly what changed.
Transmittals
Who was sent which sheet, on what date, and what they did with it.
- Drawing ready
- Transmittal prepared
- Issued to client or contractor
- Acknowledgement
- Comments received
- Revision
- Reissue
Approval status of a drawing
The client stamp, recorded as a status rather than as an email somebody remembers.
- Issued for approval
- Approved
- Approved with comments
- Revise and resubmit
- Issued for construction
- On hold
- Superseded
Technical queries
A contractor’s question is a small thing until it delays a pour.
- Query number
- Raised by and date
- Drawing or element it concerns
- Site photograph
- Engineer assigned
- Response and date
- Drawing revision it caused
- Open queries by project
- Ageing
Job cards and work allocation
What each engineer and draughtsman has open this week.
- Job card per drawing or deliverable
- Discipline and task type
- Assigned to
- Estimated hours
- Target date
- Checking stage
- Rework
- Completion
- Workload by person
Timesheets
Hours booked to a project code, filled in at the desk rather than at month end.
- Daily or weekly entry
- Project and job card
- Task type
- Hours
- Site or office
- Approval by the lead engineer
- Unbooked hours
- Utilisation by person
- Overtime
Timesheets are only as honest as the people filling them in, and no software changes that. It can make the entry take a minute, which is usually the real obstacle.
Job costing
The question every engineering director asks and few can answer: did that project make anything.
- Fee agreed
- Man-hours spent by grade
- Site visit cost
- Travel and printing
- Outsourced detailing cost
- Subconsultant fees
- Cost against fee, stage by stage
- Projects running over
- Margin by client
- Margin by project type
Site visits and inspections
The visit nobody logged is the visit nobody billed, and it is usually the one the client asks about later.
- Visit request and date
- Engineer who went
- Travel time and distance
- Observations
- Photographs
- Instructions given
- Pass or hold
- Visit counted against the agreement
- Visits beyond the agreed number
Inspection checklists
The same checks, in the same order, whoever goes to site.
- Reinforcement check before a pour
- Shuttering and cover blocks
- Steel diameter and spacing against the schedule
- Concrete grade and cube sampling
- Fabrication and weld inspection
- Erection checks
- Snag list
- Photograph against each item
- Signature and date
Materials and bought-out items
For firms that supply as well as design.
- Item master
- Bought-out items
- Supplier quotations
- Purchase orders
- Material receipt
- Test certificates from the supplier
- Issue to job
- Stock at the workshop
- Scrap and offcuts
Fabrication and shop floor
Where the drawing becomes something you can weigh.
- Work order per assembly
- Cutting and fit-up
- Welding and welder record
- Inspection stage
- Painting and coating
- Tonnage produced
- Dispatch and delivery challan
- Erection at site
- Job-wise consumption against estimate
Subconsultants and outsourced work
- Subconsultant profile
- Work order and scope
- Rate basis
- Drawings sent out
- Due dates
- Quality of what came back
- Bills received
- Payment status
- Cost booked to the project
Variations and extra work
Scope grows quietly. It should grow in writing.
- Variation raised
- Reason and instruction
- Additional scope
- Additional fee
- Client approval
- Additional drawings
- Billing status
- Variations refused
Billing against stages
- Stage complete
- Billable amount
- Invoice
- Client certification
- Deductions and retention
- Payment
- Outstanding
Retention, tax deducted at source and any agreed deduction are held separately, so the receivable figure is the real one.
Payments and follow-up
- Invoices raised
- Payments received
- Ageing by client
- Retention due for release
- Advance adjustment
- Follow-up notes
- Disputed amounts
- Projects on hold for payment
Client portal
For clients who ring your project manager only to ask what the current revision is.
- Current approved drawings
- Revision history
- Transmittals received
- Raise a query
- Query status
- Inspection reports
- Stage progress
- Invoices and payment status
- Documents
Each client sees his own project and nothing beside it, and permission decides even that much.
The site engineer’s phone
On a slab, on a Sunday, with one bar of signal.
- Today’s visits
- Drawings for that site
- Current revision only
- Inspection checklist
- Photographs from the camera
- Observations
- Hold or pass
- Query to the design office
- Offline entry that syncs later
Statutory and authority submissions
The drawings that go outside the project for someone else to stamp.
- Submission set
- Authority or department
- Date submitted
- Fee paid
- Objections received
- Resubmission
- Approval received
- Approved copy filed
Submissions still happen on the authority’s counter or its own portal. The system keeps the trail and the reminders, not the approval.
Completion and handover
- As-built drawings
- Test reports
- Inspection history
- Certificates issued
- Handover documents
- Final bill
- Retention release date
- Defect liability period
- Project closed
People and utilisation
- Engineer and draughtsman records
- Discipline and grade
- Hourly cost
- Projects assigned
- Hours booked
- Leave
- Site days
- Idle capacity
- Skills
Equipment and instruments
Testing and survey instruments travel between engineers, and their calibration dates travel with them.
- Instrument register
- Serial number
- Issued to
- Calibration due date
- Calibration records
- Breakdown and repair
- Warranty and service contract
- Location
What management opens on a Monday
- Live projects by stage
- Drawings pending approval
- Queries open beyond a week
- Site visits made against visits allowed
- Stages billable but not billed
- Invoices outstanding
- Hours booked against fee
- Projects running over
- Enquiries in hand
- Team utilisation
Roles and access
- Director
- Project manager
- Design engineer
- Checker or approver
- Draughtsman
- Site engineer
- Accounts
- Document controller
- Subconsultant
- Client
Integrations and the software you already run
- Accounting software
- WhatsApp notifications
- Cloud storage for native drawing files
- Payment records
- Attendance systems
- Existing project tools
Design software is a separate matter. A system can store, version and issue a drawing file. It does not read the geometry inside it, and any link to your CAD or analysis tools depends on what that vendor opens up.
One connected workflow, end to end.
Every stage below can sit in one system, so nobody re-enters what the last stage already captured.
- Enquiry
- Quotation
- Work order
- Project opened
- Design and drawings
- Checking and approval
- Transmittal
- Site queries
- Inspections
- Revisions
- Stage billing
- Completion documents
- Payment
You do not have to replace everything at once.
Each phase is usable on its own, so the system earns its place before the next part is built.
- 1
Projects and drawings
The project register, the drawing and revision register, transmittals and the approval status of every sheet. This much alone settles most site arguments.
- 2
Site and queries
Visit logging, inspection checklists on a phone, technical queries and the photographs that go with them.
- 3
Hours and money
Timesheets, job costing, variations, stage billing and the outstanding list your accounts person keeps in a separate sheet today.
- 4
Portals and reporting
The client portal, subconsultant access, management dashboards and whatever integrations are worth doing.
How a build actually runs.
- 01
Understand
We go through how a job moves through your office now, including the register kept in a diary.
- 02
Map
Projects, stages, drawings, roles, approvals and the points where a deliverable leaves the office.
- 03
Design
Screens and workflows drawn around your disciplines and your drawing numbering, not a template.
- 04
Build
Modules in the order that makes the office faster soonest, usually drawings before accounts.
- 05
Test
Your own engineers run a live project through it, revisions and all.
- 06
Deploy
The system opens with your running projects already loaded, and each discipline is shown only the part it works in.
- 07
Improve
More modules, more automation and more reporting as the practice grows.
Systems we can put together for you.
- Engineering project management systems
- Drawing and document control systems
- Revision and transmittal registers
- Quotation and tender systems
- Job costing software
- Timesheet and utilisation systems
- Site inspection applications
- Fabrication and job tracking systems
- Client and subconsultant portals
- Stage billing systems
- Engineering CRM
- Management dashboards
- Mobile applications for site teams
- Multi-office engineering platforms
Questions owners ask before starting.
What is custom engineering project management software?
The disciplines, the drawing numbering, the fee stages and the approvals are yours, and the software is written to them. A task tracker treats a structural drawing like a to-do item. The difference shows in revisions, transmittals and stage billing.
Can the system manage drawing revisions?
Yes, and most firms start here. Each sheet carries its revision, its reason, its approval status and its superseded versions, so the current one is never in doubt.
Can it work with AutoCAD, Revit or STAAD files?
It can store, version, issue and track those files. It does not open the geometry inside them or check a design, and any deeper link depends on what that software vendor makes available.
Can we track man-hours against a project fee?
Yes. Hours booked by grade sit against the agreed fee stage by stage, which is how a firm finds out that the small residential job took more hours than the factory.
Can site engineers log inspections from a phone?
Yes, with the checklist, photographs and a pass or hold. Entry can work offline and sync when there is signal, because a basement has none.
Can the system count site visits against what the fee allowed?
Yes. Each visit is logged against the project, and visits beyond the agreed number are flagged so they can be billed or written off knowingly.
Can clients see drawings without ringing us?
Yes, through a portal that shows only the current approved set, the revision history and their own queries. Permissions are set per project.
Can we handle both consultancy and fabrication work?
Yes, though they are different modules. Design work is costed in hours and fabrication in tonnage and material, so the two are set up with their own screens.
Do we need all of it?
No, and most firms should not start with all of it. Drawings, queries and site visits usually earn their keep first, with costing and billing after.
Can it replace our accounting software?
It should not try. Accounts stay where they are, and a running account bill is passed across only if your package has an import route we can test first.
Can this be built as a product we sell to other firms?
Yes, but plan it that way at the beginning. Another office numbers its drawings by its own rule, so a product for several practices has to let each one keep that rule.
How do we know what to build first?
A free technology audit looks at your last three months of drawings, queries and bills and says which of them is costing you the most to keep by hand.
How we work with this trade.
Build the system your engineering office actually runs on.
An engineering firm is judged on the sheet that reaches site and the certificate it can produce two years later. Both are records before they are anything else.
Take us through one job, from the first enquiry to the retention release. The drawing register is usually where we start, because a superseded sheet on site is the mistake that costs real money.
Tell us how your engineering companies runs today.
We will tell you what can be digitised, what can be connected, what is worth automating, and what you should leave alone.
- No obligation
- We reply the same working day
- Your details stay private