A structural firm’s fee is fixed at contract, but the hours keep coming after the drawings go out. Delegated-design packages send connection calculations and specialty-engineer submittals back for your review, and construction administration (CA) adds submittals and requests for information (RFIs) while the CA fee stays put when the build runs long.

A task tool tells you whether the work got done, while a phase budget tells you how much of the fee that work burned while the phase is still open.

Our Pick and the Shortlist by Firm Size

Monograph is our pick for 5- to 100-person US structural firms on QuickBooks Online because it budgets every phase, including CA, and shows burn against the project timeline. BQE Core is the runner-up for firms that want project accounting from the same vendor. Deltek Ajera suits firms replacing QuickBooks with a project-accounting ledger, while BigTime suits firms that also bill non-design services.

The engineering software roundup covers the wider engineering list, and mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) firms should start with the MEP software guide.

Quick Reference: Structural Project Management Software Compared

Each row below reflects vendor documentation and review listings as of October 2026. Monograph’s pricing cell links to its pricing page for current plans:

What Structural Firms Need That Generic Project Management Tools Miss

Delegated design moves design work to someone else’s engineer and keeps the review hours in your office. The American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) Code of Standard Practice lists connection design options, one of which assigns connections to a licensed engineer working for the fabricator.

The owner’s designated representative for design, such as the structural engineer of record, still sets the connection criteria and confirms representative samples in writing. The connection engineer’s own review does not replace that approval, so the specialty engineer’s submittals come back to your office before the work is complete. Those review hours need a budget line of their own.

Your software has to give every one of those obligations a place to land. Test each candidate against these criteria:

• Phase-based fees: Give CA and delegated-design review their own budgets, so staff charge review hours against the fee allocated to that work.
• Utilization by person: Researchers report an A&E median of 58.9% utilization for the 47th Deltek Clarity study, measured in labor dollars. You want that figure weekly, by person and by phase.
• Calc quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) sign-off: Use CASE Tool 9-2, a quality assurance plan, to plan quality reviews and firm standards, along with construction quality assurance. Check and back-check time needs its own budget line.
• Drawing revisions and transmittals: The National Council of Structural Engineers Associations (NCSEA) describes revision clouds and deltas on formally issued sets. The sets live in your document system, and the hours spent reissuing them belong on a phase.
• Submittals and RFIs: CASE publishes Tool 10-2, a construction administration log. Use your project software to budget the hours behind each logged item.

You can use a task tool to see whether staff answered a submittal. You can’t use it to see whether they’ve spent most of the CA fee by that point. A phase budget for CA and for delegated-design review closes that gap.

Construction Administration Is Where Fixed Fees Bleed

The contractor’s schedule sets the length of CA. The fee you priced at contract doesn’t follow it. The CA fee stays put when the build runs long, while submittals and RFIs keep arriving.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) construction phase budgeting note cites the old 10/25/40/5/20 split, which gives construction contract administration 20% of the fee. On its 24-month example, that budget covers 9.7 hours a week.

An AIA article on rising CA demands describes an 18-month schedule becoming 24 months, and the hours inside that longer window land on the same fixed fee. Separately, the 47th Deltek Clarity study reports 31% of firms named execution as their hardest phase and another 31% named closure.

To see the burn while CA is still open, work through these steps in order:

1. Set CA up as its own phase, with hours planned against the expected construction duration.
2. Have staff log time to CA weekly, with delegated-design review kept separate from general RFI response.
3. Each month, compare the share of CA fee spent with the share of the construction schedule elapsed.
4. Raise additional services as soon as the build runs past the stated period. Check whether your agreement with the architect lets you bill CA time beyond that period as additional services.

Monograph’s MoneyGantt™ puts step three on one screen. It draws each phase on a Gantt-style timeline and shows that phase’s budget-to-cash progress alongside it. You can see how much of the CA fee is gone against how far construction has run without switching between a schedule and a financial report. You still have months to change staffing or open the additional-services conversation when most of the CA fee is spent at the build’s midpoint. The phase budget tracking page shows how the view works.

Each Tool In Detail

Monograph fits QuickBooks Online firms that need CA burn by phase. BQE Core and Deltek Ajera add ledger depth. BigTime suits firms billing a broader mix of services. Excel plus a tracker holds up for firms under 5 people.

Monograph

Monograph is firm management software built for engineering firms and other A&E firms, and 16,000+ architects and engineers across 2,000+ firms use it. It’s rated 4.5/5 on its G2 review listing and its Capterra review listing. The data model follows the Architect’s Handbook of Professional Practice, so budgets sit on phases. Calendar-based time suggestions appear in the web timesheet. Only after the person confirms them do they count against a phase budget.

• Strengths: Capacity forecasting draws on compensation hours per employee and win-probability-weighted lead hours. The QuickBooks Online connection cuts manual reconciliation between project and accounting work, and Stripe handles client payments and subconsultant payouts.
• Weaknesses: Monograph connects to QuickBooks Online for accounting rather than keeping its own general ledger, and it doesn’t keep the RFI or submittal log itself.

Best for: 5- to 100-person US structural firms on QuickBooks Online that want CA burn visible by phase.

BQE Core

BQE CORE is A&E management software. Its Foundations package covers time and expense, billing, project management and reporting, and Accounting; customer relationship management (CRM), human resources, and Payroll are sold as additional modules. It holds 4.5/5 across 796 reviews on its Capterra CORE listing.

• Strengths: BQE Core supports cost-plus contracts, which BQE notes firms working for federal or state agencies may need. Firms can keep QuickBooks for back-office work or move to CORE’s own accounting.
• Weaknesses: Modules are priced separately by quote. The percent-complete field on the Projects screen doesn’t update automatically.

Best for: Small and mid-sized firms with cost-plus public work, or firms that want the ledger from the same vendor.

Deltek Ajera

Deltek describes Ajera as project management and accounting for small A&E firms. It shows 3.6/5 across 62 reviews on Capterra.

• Strengths: Ajera has built-in project-based accounting and a payroll add-on. Its Progress report supports earned value analysis by phase, and the Ask Dela assistant is available to cloud customers.
• Weaknesses: No QuickBooks Online connection is documented, so adopting Ajera means converting your books. Pricing isn’t published.

Best for: Firms ready to run accounting and payroll in one Deltek ledger and manage projects there, with someone available to staff the implementation.

BigTime

BigTime serves engineering, architecture, accounting, IT consulting and legal firms, and its homepage claims 3,000+ professional services firms. Capterra reviewers give it a 4.6/5 rating across 664 reviews.

• Strengths: BigTime publishes its entry price and connects to QuickBooks on the Essentials tier. It offers capacity reporting through its separately billed Resource Management add-on.
• Weaknesses: Budgets sit at the task level, though BigTime lets firms use tasks as phases. Project Budgeting is listed on Premier.

Best for: Firms that bill non-design services or need Sage Intacct.

Excel plus a standalone time tracker

A small structural firm can start with this stack. The tracker records hours to a project, the fee and phase split live in a workbook, and someone reconciles the two at month-end. The 2025 Deltek Clarity study found that 80% of firms still rely completely or moderately on manual processes and spreadsheets for accounting and finance.

For structural work, the stack breaks because time has no phase budget to land against. The overrun only shows up at month-end when CA on one job overlaps design development on two others.

Best for: Firms under 5 people running a few projects at a time.

What Structural Project Management Software Costs And How Long Setup Takes

The four vendors use different pricing models. Compare them on the full first-year commitment:

1. Published per-seat: BigTime publishes Essentials pricing. Advanced and Premier are quoted, as is Enterprise.
2. Quote by user and module: BQE prices Foundations and each added module by quote, and its software-as-a-service (SaaS) agreement offers no refund of prepaid subscriptions.
3. Quote only: Deltek doesn’t publish Ajera pricing.
4. Monograph: Subscription. See Monograph’s pricing page for current plans.

Where your books live decides the setup effort. Monograph and BigTime keep QuickBooks in place, so your books stay where they are. Moving to Ajera means converting your books into its ledger, which turns a software purchase into an accounting project.

How Structural Tools Connect To Accounting And The Design Stack

Decide where your general ledger will live before you compare anything else.

• Monograph: Connects to QuickBooks Online and Stripe. The QuickBooks Online connection cuts manual reconciliation between project and accounting work, and Stripe collects client payments and pays subconsultants.
• BQE Core: Connects to QuickBooks Online, and BQE also supports Xero and MYOB AccountRight.
• BigTime: Connects to QuickBooks Online and Desktop. BigTime also lists Xero and Sage Intacct, plus NetSuite.
• Ajera: Carries its own ledger.

Your design stack runs alongside whichever tool you pick, and none of the four replaces it. Teams model and document in Autodesk Revit, which manages sheet revisions. Fabricators and detailers work in Trimble’s Tekla Structures. Engineers run analysis in ETABS from Computers and Structures, Inc. (CSI) or Bentley’s STAAD.Pro.

Drawings move through Autodesk Construction Cloud. Its document tool sends traceable transmittals with version history. The hours your staff spends in those programs should land on a phase in the project tool.

How To Choose And Who Should Not Buy

Firm size changes which question decides the purchase:

• 5 to 20 people: Ask whether CA on one job regularly overlaps design on others. If it does, the spreadsheet is already hiding overruns, and Monograph fits.
• 20 to 50 people: Ask who owns the ledger. Keep QuickBooks and pick Monograph, or move accounting into BQE Core if you bill cost-plus public work.
• 50 to 100 people: If you keep QuickBooks Online and want CA burn by phase, Monograph still fits. If finance wants payroll and a general ledger inside the project system, Ajera fits. If you bill non-design services, look at BigTime.

Dynamic Engineering, a 10-person structural firm in Florida, reports 25% profit growth after moving from Excel to Monograph. Ten people puts the firm in the 5 to 20 band above, inside Monograph’s target range of 5 to 100 people. That band is where the spreadsheet starts hiding overruns when CA on one job overlaps design on others.

Monograph is the wrong choice for some firms:

• Firms under 5 people: Monograph targets firms of 5 to 100 people. Below 5, Excel plus a time tracker still covers the work.
• Firms well beyond 100 people: Firms that size, or those with multi-entity accounting, need an enterprise-scale system.
• Firms not on QuickBooks Online: QuickBooks Online is Monograph’s only accounting connection.
• Non-US firms: Monograph targets US A&E firms.
• Construction-phase-only practices: Firms whose work is mostly RFI and submittal logs need a document-control tool first.

Two questions narrow the shortlist before you sit through a walkthrough. The first is whether CA on one job overlaps design on others. The second is whether your books stay in QuickBooks Online. If you have 5 to 100 people, keep your books in QuickBooks Online and lose fee in CA, run the phase-budget test first: compare the share of CA fee spent with the share of the construction schedule elapsed. If you fall outside that profile, weigh the ledger-based tools, BQE Core and Deltek Ajera, before booking a demo.

Book A Demo To See Structural Project Financials In One View

Spreadsheets and a separate time tracker hide the relationship between CA hours and the fixed fee until the phase closes. Monograph connects pipeline, phase budgets, staffing, timesheets, and billing. Book a demo to see that work against your own project structure.

Frequently Asked Questions

These answers cover the structural shortlist and the broader engineering field. They also cover the tools firms use alongside project software.

What is the best project management software for structural engineering firms?

Monograph is the best fit for US firms of 5 to 100 people that keep their books in QuickBooks Online. Its data model follows the Architect’s Handbook of Professional Practice. The CA fee sits on its own phase budget, so you see fee burn while the phase is still open.

BQE Core fits firms that want accounting from the same vendor. Factor expected construction duration into the CA budget whichever tool you pick, since one AIA Community Hub author lists duration among the inputs to an effort-based fee.

What is the best project management software for engineering firms?

Monograph fits structural firms. It targets firms of 5 to 100 people and connects to QuickBooks Online for accounting. The engineering software roundup covers the full engineering field.

Structural firms should weight the choice toward CA tracking, since that phase runs on the contractor’s schedule while the fee stays fixed. Delegated-design review also needs its own budget line, because the specialty engineer’s submittals come back to your office for the engineer of record to review. Give both CA and that review their own phase budgets in whichever tool you pick.

What software do engineering firms use to manage projects?

Engineering firms use firm management software such as Monograph, project-accounting systems such as Deltek Ajera and BQE Core, or services platforms such as BigTime. Ajera carries its own ledger, so adopting it means converting your books. Monograph and BigTime keep QuickBooks in place. BQE Core connects to QuickBooks Online or runs its own accounting.

Monograph leaves the RFI and submittal logs to a separate document-control tool. Excel and a time tracker cover firms under 5 people with few overlapping projects.