Construction Project Workflow

1. Start the project, not a calculation

A project is a building being designed. Calculations are tools you reach later, from the stage that needs them — so Start your project asks only for a name and whatever identity you have to hand. You can save with nothing but a name and fill the rest as information arrives.

Fields you leave empty are recorded as not recorded. That is different from “zero” and different from “does not apply”, and the workspace keeps them apart rather than guessing.

2. Define components progressively

The building definition answers what kind of building is this. Components answer what is actually in it, and they arrive stage by stage — a basement, then its footings, then the slabs and beams above.

• Basement — Overall basement extents and depth below datum.
• Floor — One floor plate. Area can come from the floor record or be entered here.
• Roof — Roof slab or deck area and build-up thickness.
• Core / shear walls — Lift and stair cores as repeated vertical elements.
• Foundation type — The foundation solution as designed. Capacity checks still need the soil report.
• Footing / pad — One pad, or a repeated pad type with a count.
• Pile — Pile diameter and length from the geotechnical design.
• Slab — Slab extents and thickness. Thickness drives volume and formwork.
• Beam — Beam size and span as designed.
• Column — Column size, height and storey count.
• Wall — Wall length, height and thickness. Partitions, core walls and retaining walls are distinct designs — record which.
• Stair / stair core — Flight geometry and number of flights.
• Opening — Doors and windows, used to deduct from envelope areas.
• Service run — Buried service run: trench length, width and depth.

Only the dimensions that kind needs are requested. A component you have measured but not sized stays explicitly “no dimensions recorded”, and no volume is derived from an unmeasured input.

3. Work the lifecycle

The registry has 21 stages in five phases. Guided mode walks them in order and warns about unmet prerequisites; Expert mode opens any stage directly. Neither mode locks you out of a stage — a warning is advisory, because you may legitimately need to work a stage out of order.

Current capability: 4 supported, 17 partially supported, 0 not available yet. A stage is never marked complete because you opened it.

4. Use calculators as contextual tools

Each component lists the calculators that actually apply to it. Where a component dimension and a calculator input are the same physical quantity in the same unit, the value carries across automatically.

Where they are not, the tool opens empty. A millimetre slab thickness is not the same quantity as a metre member depth, and EngiMetric will not push one into the other just because the boxes line up.

Opening a calculator never adds a quantity. Nothing reaches the bill of quantities until a result is reviewed and explicitly transferred.

5. Move quantities into the bill of quantities

1. Run the calculator and read the result, including anything it reports as unresolved.
2. Raise a quantity transfer against the component or stage.
3. Review it: provenance, unit, and the BOQ section it will land in.
4. Approve. Only then is the quantity consolidated into the project's bundle.

If the bill of quantities already holds a different quantity for that source, the transfer is refused, not applied over the top. If you have edited that BOQ line by hand, it stays untouched. Conflicts are surfaced for you to resolve.

6. Apply rates, and read the result honestly

Rates are yours. EngiMetric holds no market price database and will not supply one, so a line with no rate is shown as unpriced rather than as zero. Two modes exist: a single rate, or a rate analysis broken into material, labour, equipment and other. An incomplete analysis never silently falls back to a single rate.

A partially priced bill of quantities is reported as a known cost with a count of priced and unpriced lines. It is never presented as a project total.

7. Procurement

Once quantities exist, the procurement register derives one package per BOQ line, carrying the provenance of where each quantity came from. You record supplier, quotation reference, quoted amount, required date and status yourself. There is no supplier database, no market price and no lead-time data, so those fields stay unknown until you enter them — and a quotation comparison needs two real quotations before it can exist.

8. Produce the report

The construction report is generated from the authoritative project and bundle data: quantities, BOQ, rates, cost summary, incomplete and review items, and the engineering provenance behind each quantity. Export is JSON, CSV and browser print-to-PDF; runtime XLSX export is deferred.