Professional Project Management and Streamlined Office Organisation for Architects and Engineers

Poolar.Project creates a shared working platform for all project members: plans, documents, tasks, deadlines and responsibilities are all stored centrally in the project workspace. For architectural practices, this is particularly advantageous when coordination with clients, construction project managers and other stakeholders needs to be kept on track, rather than getting lost in emails, file attachments and separate lists. Changes remain traceable, and everyone involved works from the same set of information.

The cloud solution digitally maps the plan review and approval process within the project workspace. Review packages, multi-stage review steps, automatically generated review stamps and reference numbers, as well as the integrated online editor, help to review and share plan versions in a more structured manner. For design teams, this means less manual coordination work, clearer review processes and more organised documentation of comments, sketches and approvals.

Because in construction projects, many stakeholders work with the same documents but often do not share the same level of knowledge, Poolar.Project is a common data environment (CDE) in which project-related information, plans and documents are centrally accessible. Using a CDE prevents data from being entered multiple times, ensures that documents are kept up to date and reduces the loss of information during collaboration. This is particularly important for architectural practices when they have to liaise between their own specialist planning, the client and the contractors.

A key advantage lies in the structured workflows. Decisions, checks and tasks are not only documented, but are also assigned statuses, responsibilities, deadlines and a history. From the architectural practice’s perspective, this facilitates communication with clients and construction project managers, as enquiries, approvals and comments are based on a clear, shared process logic and are automatically documented.

For project management, the big picture is key: dashboards and overview pages with lists show tasks, deadlines, responsibilities and process statuses. Outstanding items from meeting minutes or other workflows can be tracked collectively. This helps to provide a more informed account of the project status, not only internally but also to clients and construction project management.

Meeting minutes are managed centrally, in an audit-proof way and with a clear link to the project participants involved. More importantly, meeting items can be used to create and assign tasks directly, even during the meeting itself, with responsibilities and deadlines defined at the same time. For architectural practices, this is particularly useful when meetings with clients, project managers, general planners or specialist planners need to result in concrete next steps that do not later have to be searched for across different communication channels.

Decision management structures the process from the submission of a request through to the final decision. There is a clear hierarchy of roles: planners submit requests for changes, whilst the client or construction project manager makes the decision; comments can be incorporated at an early stage. This is useful for architectural practices because it makes decision-making processes more transparent, without blurring the decision-making authority of the client or the construction project management team.

Yes. In addition to planning-related functions, Poolar.Project also includes construction site tools such as defect management and a site diary. Defects can be recorded directly on site using mobile devices, edited later and assigned to the relevant responsibilities; several site managers can also work in parallel and subsequently transfer the data to the central database. This is particularly relevant for architectural practices that also undertake site management tasks, as site information is not generated outside the project workspace but is processed within the same system.

BCF issue management supports model-based communication with direct reference to the IFC model and precise 3D positioning; the distribution, organisation and analysis of issues take place independently of the BIM software being used. For architectural practices, this is particularly advantageous when model-based coordination needs to be carried out across different disciplines and software platforms.

This is particularly relevant when an architectural or engineering firm wishes to organise not only project-related collaboration with external stakeholders, but also its internal office processes more consistently. Poolar.Office is a solution for tracking working hours across projects, resource planning and internal administration. When combined with Poolar.Project, a seamless link is established between office management and project work via single sign-on. Staff can transition seamlessly into project collaboration with external parties and access the relevant project data if the office operates its own project workspaces using Poolar.Project. The integration can also be carried out with the client’s Poolar.Project project workspaces.

No. Poolar.Project and Poolar.Office are web-based and can be used without any local installation. The applications can be accessed via a secure internet connection; updates do not need to be installed separately.
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