Resource management tools equip engineering teams with the power to succeed.

By keeping an eye on progress and potential pitfalls, project managers can allocate resources exactly where they need to be for maximum efficiency - all of which adds up to more productive engineers who are able to dodge costly mistakes along the way.

Today we’ll explore why resource management is equally crucial for engineering projects and share our pick of the top engineering resource management tools.

What is resource management?

Resource management is the essential process of planning, scheduling and allocating people, money and technology for projects - with the goal of achieving maximum organisational success. For most engineering firms, the primary resource is people. It’s about ensuring that the team has enough work to stay busy but not so much that they burn-out or log unwanted overtime hours.

Importance of resource management

Resource management is about leveraging resources to maximise efficiency and eliminate waste – making sure you only use what you need, and nothing more. Engineering firms need to be able to identify employees with specialised skills and resource them on suitable projects. Having visibility into team's skills and availability will help you make the most out of your staff. Engineering firms need a resource management tool to operate at peak efficiency.

Resource management software gives crucial insight to engineering firms. In short, engineering resource management software can help ensure that all projects have access to whatever resources are needed along the way.

Here are a few of the most crucial ways effective resource management can help your business:

Assists planning & scheduling

Ensures that all relevant team members understand what resources are available and when.

Effective resource utilisation

Provides oversight of where people are currently resourced and whether those allocations are billable.

Helps understand resource capacity

Shows the true availability of your resource capacity, factoring in that not all available time can be utilised.

Prevents burnout

Insight into your team’s workload enables you to prevent overallocation and avoid burnout.

Builds transparency

Allows other teams or departments to view your team’s capacity and schedule or delay new projects accordingly.

Project management triangle for engineering teams

As the manager of an engineering project, it’s up to you to maintain the balance of managing your team while completing all tasks within budget and on schedule. This is where the project management triangle comes in.

The management triangle is composed of three elements – schedule, scope and budget. These variables are connected like links on a chain: if one needs adjusting, two others must follow suit, or else quality will suffer.

Scheduling

When looking at scheduling, account for the overall project timeline, time allotted for strategy and planning, as well as the number of projected phases.

Scope

The scope of an engineering project consists of various elements, such as the complexity and quality of the desired result. The scope plays an important role in determining completion time and how much to bill clients for a particular project.

Budget

Project managers everywhere understand the challenge of trying to juggle tough deadlines, tight budgets and considerable scope - it's a real test of your skills. The notorious project management triangle can make or break any successful project, which is why engineering team resource management can play such a vital role in the success of your future projects.

Top 10 resource management tools for engineering teams

If you want to stay ahead of the game, an engineering resource management tool is an essential investment. Adopting this software into your processes frees up vital resources, and ensures smooth operation on every project. Here are ten of the most suitable programs for the engineering industry.

Projectworks

Projectworks is a powerful program for engineering teams. Increase your business margins by helping you manage your team's time and project financials more efficiently.

Projectworks' will give your firm the following:

• Workforce insight, through time tracking
• Time-saving expense records with simple employee logging functions
• Higher staff utilisation with powerful resource planning
• Future-proof plans through revenue forecasting functions
• Smooth and easy invoices that you can mould to fit your firm's unique guidelines
• Oversight of your staff with direct leave management
• Superior business knowledge through clearly presented generated reports & metrics.

Asana

Asana assists teams in orchestrating their work on a large scale, from daily tasks to strategic initiatives. With Asana, teams can move quickly and accomplish more with less—regardless of their location or the number of departments involved.

Box

Box provides a centralised, secure platform for handling your entire content lifecycle. Designed for those in visual industries, it handles everything from file creation and sharing to signature, classification and retention.

Clockify

Primarily used for tracking time and attendance, Clockify is a cloud-based resource management tool that allows users to log their hours from a web browser or mobile app.

Procore

From project planning to project closeout, Procore manages your projects, resources, and finances. Every project contributor is linked to the owner and a general or speciality contractor via the platform. Managers can oversee project details, schedule tasks, and track progress using the centralised dashboard.

monday.com

monday.com is a project management platform that enables teams of all sizes to plan, prioritise, manage, and execute their work. The platform provides solutions for a variety of uses, including marketing, sales, operations, IT, HR, and others.

Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a task execution platform and collaboration tool with an intuitive spreadsheet-like interface that assists teams in real-time project planning, tracking, and management. Document and resource management, reporting, file sharing, and timeline tracking are just a few of the project management tools available in Smartsheet.

Wrike

Wrike is a cloud-based project management platform for teams of 20 or more. It allows various teams to work remotely and incorporates Gantt charts, calendars, a workload view, custom dashboards and real-time updates.

Miro

Miro is a cloud-based collaboration tool designed for small and medium-sized businesses. The solution includes a digital whiteboard for research, ideation, creating customer journeys and user story maps, wireframing, and other collaborative activities.

MeisterTask

MeisterTask is a project and task management solution for businesses of all sizes. The kanban-style project boards can be configured to support any agile workflow and are ideal for small teams looking for a virtual framework.

Summary

When it comes to engineering team resource management, Projectworks has every base covered. From time management and invoicing to resourcing and forecasting, our software makes light work of project management.