Project Management Spreadsheets

EnginExcel helps Project Managers who work in Mechanical Engineering companies to customise spreadsheets to automatically handle and analyse project data.

Part of my daily job involves the project management of middle-sized projects. This requires me to focus on respecting timelines, checking costs, making sure that all the people working on the project are going in the right direction. I know the human mind is not perfect and it's impossible to constantly remember all the data, all the things to do and all the milestones to respect. In my opinion a good project manager knows how to handle data and how to keep everything in the right place and well organised.

Big projects normally use full time project managers, who use specific softwares (like Microsoft Project) to track information like the project spend and forecast, the resources, etc. When facing smaller projects, some people prefer to keep track of all the data using Microsoft Excel. I am a passionate Excel user, so I think this is a very good choice when there is the need to keep things simple while having a powerful instrument.

Excel offers an incredible range of functions that allow to do "nearly" everything. The possibility of creating customised VBA macros gives the user the flexibility to design specific tools that help to transforms it from a good data storage to a good data analyser. Excel allows to get more information from the data available and also to automate the process of obtaining the data. This both helps to save time and avoid human errors.

As an example, a project manager may need to do a monthly report that summarises the status of the project. This document may include the calculation of some KPIs, the summary of the financial status of the project, some charts showing the level of completion of some tasks, etc. Some of this data may not be available directly, so the user could create a macro that automatically picks all the data that is needed and creates a page to be printed as a report.

These are some other examples of customised spreadsheets for Project Managers:

• Import and analysis of hours/costs of a project
• Employees availability
• Project to do list (see example)
• Template for project setup
• Gantt chart generator
• Documents list with automated name and version update

EnginExcel combines the experience in the management of mechanical projects and the efficiency in the design of automated spreadsheets that fulfil the specific requests of the customer. This is to provide you with the right tool that will help your company to improve the quality and the efficiency of your projects.