This is not just specific to Civil Engineering, but also to LandWorx as a small site-civil engineering firm. Some of these could be interchangeable, but most are pretty proprietary. These are/have been life savers and/or game changers for us as a firm!
1. Factor App (factorapp.com)
We all know that Quickbooks is the standard for tracking all things financial AND that Deltek (or some form of it) is the industry standard for large companies, but after five years and still no great solution for small client-driven and project-centered companies, we discovered Factor. It works with Quickbooks, but through it we can set up and track KPI’s by project, phase, project manager, project type, you name it. It’s both versatile and super easy to use – and the customer service is awesome.
2. AutoCad Civil 3D (www.autodesk.com/products/civil-3d/)
Even with many many issues (from not playing nice with Revit to crazy hardware requirements to $$$), this is still the industry standard and can’t be beat. Older versions may be okay for some smaller projects, but if you want to share drawings, utilize some of the easily update-able grading and utility tools, this is a necessity.
3. Google Suite (workspace.google.com/)
Nearly nine years ago, Google was really the only game in town as far as an online-server setup with Google Drive. There are now a LOT of options, but the integration of everything from email to presentations to chat to now AI, there haven’t been enough compelling reasons to switch. Being able to pull up anything in any folder on our server from anywhere used to be a parlor trick, but is now a necessity.
4. Hydrology Studio (www.hydrologystudio.com/)
When first researching H&H software, I was looking for ease of use and ability to plug and play with local standards on small projects. This fit the bill. Over the years and discussions with our PMs we have talked about changing many times, but this still works – and works well. We recently did a project with three separate rain gardens in series and two dry basins in parallel all to a single outfall and it cranked it out.
5. 90.io (www.ninety.io/)
If you know, you know. This one is more recent for us and comes along with the EOS program that LandWorx has taken on to increase transparency and accountability internally. It’s very convenient and powerful. I DO wish it could integrate at some level with our calendars and tasks as we identify meetings and to-dos, but overall it’s been a great resource.