Monograph unveils Resource, a solution to help the AEC industry, architects, and engineers better manage their time and resources

The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry is widely-known for having long work hours and creating an overbearing amount of stress on employees––which commonly leads a number of professionals to leave the industry after just a few years. Enter Monograph, a Silicon Valley tech startup that has just developed a solution to address the problems and challenges posed by the inevitable overtime that stems from a lack of efficient project management

Today, Monograph unveiled Resource, a new set of tools to provide a better path for firms to manage their most valuable resources: time and talent. In fact, Resource is expected to minimize the amount of time it takes to plan for the week across several team members and various projects by up to 50 percent. Before Resource, firms had no choice but to use endless amounts of spreadsheets in an effort to keep things organized (like budgets, timesheets, and project staffing)––and this siloed system is just not cutting it. Launched just a few weeks ago, many design firms across the country have already experienced the benefits during its soft launch.

Formalized Monday morning meetings are widely used among AEC firms as an opportunity for project managers and firm leaders to sync with team members, discuss upcoming priorities, and reevaluate project schedules and deliverables. Although necessary, these project teams are directly impacted by the amount of time it takes to review and plan for each week’s schedule. In addition, these meetings are largely fragmented with some firms relying on vocal updates lacking visual feedback versus others who congregate around a screen with a project manager manipulating multiple spreadsheets that track progress.

“Based on our research, we estimate that between $37,500 and $165,000 or more of billable time is spent annually on these Monday morning meetings among firms with five or more employees,” said Robert Yuen, CEO of Monograph. “Through Resource, we’re giving firms the ability to ditch the spreadsheets and instead leverage a digital tool that simplifies, streamlines, and optimizes these weekly planning meetings.”

According to Monograph, Resource will allow project teams to get an overall view of the week’s work, as well as manipulate units of time in a bottom-up fashion so they can understand the impact of that decision in real-time on the allocated budget, in terms of being on-track, over, or under. This empowered ability to host augmented meetings that measure the impact of what has been discussed ensures that no employee is spread too thin, or that one project is behind on progress whereas another is ahead. The technology also keeps the team organized and aligned on all efforts, without the need for endless amounts of spreadsheets. Instead, Resource is viewed in one user-friendly interface, which adds a visual component that is key to communication among architecture and design professionals.

“We believe Resource provides a streamlined solution that will help firms improve project outcomes and minimize the amount of lag time inherent in manipulating schedules for individuals during these meetings,” adds Alex Dixon, Head of Product of Monograph. “We can either shrink the amount of time spent in these meetings, open up this time to discuss higher-level strategic alignment across team members, or in some instances remove the need for this meeting entirely! The best talent-based outcome would be that team members get to discuss blockers and where improvement could be made from the previous week’s work.”

Monograph was founded in 2016 by founded by designers Robert Yuen, Alex Dixon, and Moe Amaya. The San Francisco-based startup is a practice operations platform designed to help architects and engineers oversee projects, timesheets, and forecasts in one, integrated, and simple interface.

Monograph offers firm management software designed to help architects and engineers oversee projects, timesheets, and forecasts in one, integrated, and simple interface. The software is deeply rooted in the founders’ experiences in building tools for architecture firms, where they noticed a recurring challenge—architects and project managers were discontent with their existing and non-existent management software.