Most project managers at engineering and architecture firms don't run one project. They run six, or twelve, at different phases, for different clients, with the same handful of engineers and designers spread across all of them. A permit set is due on one job while another is in construction administration and a third is waiting on the client's comments.
Managing multiple projects at once is mostly a question of which task gets done next, by whom. Here's a routine that keeps that question answerable.
Keep one list for every project
When each project has its own spreadsheet, notebook page, or whiteboard, the only way to see the whole week is to open all of them. Priorities end up set by whichever project you looked at last, or whichever client called most recently.
Put every task for every project in one place, with the project it belongs to on each one. You should be able to see everything due this week, across all your jobs, without opening a single project.
Attach each task to the work it's about
"Revise grading plan" means something on the project it came from. On a list of forty tasks across eight projects, it needs more context: which project, which sheet, and ideally which comment prompted it.
Tasks written against a specific drawing or document are easier to pick up, easier to hand off, and easier to check when they're done. They also keep the person doing the work from asking where the request came from.
Give every task an owner and a due date
A task with no owner usually doesn't get done. A task with no due date tends to get pushed back every week, and nobody notices until a deadline is close.
When you create a task, assign it to one person and give it a date, even a rough one. If you don't know who should own it yet, assign it to yourself until you do. "No due date" should be a short list you review on purpose.
Sort by due date first, then by what each task blocks
Ranking every task against every other task across a dozen projects isn't realistic. A simpler order works well for most firms:
1. Overdue work. Anything past its date gets looked at first. Either it gets done, it gets a new date with a reason, or it gets reassigned.
2. Today and the next seven days. This is the working list for the week.
3. Within each day, work that holds up someone else. A redline the CAD technician is waiting on comes before a task only you depend on. A response a contractor needs to keep building comes before an internal cleanup task.
4. Priority as the tiebreaker. High, normal, and low are useful for choosing between two tasks due the same day. They work poorly as the main sort, because when everything is marked high, the label stops meaning anything.
Review the week across all projects
Set aside time early each week, Monday morning for example, to go through every open task across your projects. Look for three things:
- Tasks that are overdue or have no date
- Tasks waiting on a client, a consultant, or a reviewer, so you can follow up
- People with far more due this week than they can finish
The weekly review is also the time to clear out tasks that no longer matter. A list full of stale items gets ignored.
Rebalance the workload before it becomes a deadline problem
When you're managing multiple projects with a shared team, one person's overloaded week is usually visible days in advance. If an engineer has three projects' worth of tasks due Thursday, move some of them to someone else on Monday, while there's still time for the handoff.
Reassigning in bulk, and telling people when work lands on them, keeps this from turning into a round of emails.
Capture tasks where they come up
Tasks come from review comments, client email, coordination calls, and site visits. The ones that get written down later are the ones that get lost. Create the task where the request happened, while the context is still there, and link it back to its source.
How Kineo handles it
In Kineo, every task belongs to a project or to a specific document on that project, with an assignee, due date, priority, and status (to do, in progress, blocked, or completed). The Tasks page lists your tasks across every project, grouped into overdue, today, the next seven days, later, and no due date. Owners, admins, and project managers can switch to every task in the firm. Filter the list by project, assignee, priority, or status, and save the views you use each week. The same list also works as a board by status.
For the weekly rebalance, select several tasks to complete, reassign, reschedule, or reprioritize them at once. People get a notification and an email when they're assigned a task, mentioned in a comment, or someone comments on their task, and anyone with tasks overdue or due that day gets one email at 7 each morning.
Tasks can be created from any markup in a drawing review, and the task links back to the spot on the sheet. When you add a task, you can type a date like "friday" or "in 2 weeks" and Kineo sets the due date. The assistant can show who is carrying the most tasks on a project and hand tasks from one person to another when you ask, and it suggests tasks from client email for someone on your team to apply.