Project Management For Architects: Process & Software

I know that without proper management, even the most brilliant architectural designs can falter under the weight of missed deadlines, budget overruns, or communication breakdowns.

Project management provides architects a structured framework to plan, execute, and monitor every phase of the project—from initial concept to final construction.

This guide is all about the project management process for architects. 

I’ll cover the basics, a six-step project management process, and how you can become a good project manager in architecture in 2025.

What does project management for architects involve?

Project management for architects involves coordinating the entire lifecycle of architectural projects, from initial planning to final execution.

The goal of project management for architects is to ensure alignment with design goals, quality standards, budgets, and timelines.

This requires balancing your creative vision with practical constraints, such as client requirements and regulatory approvals.

What are the core elements of project management for architects?

The key elements of project management in the context of architects include:

• Defining project scope: This includes establishing clear objectives, deliverables, and boundaries to align stakeholder expectations with the project’s vision and constraints.
• Developing schedules: Creating realistic timelines that outline key milestones, dependencies, and deadlines to ensure orderly progression of design and construction phases.
• Allocating resources: Strategically assigning personnel, materials, and budgets to optimize efficiency while balancing creative, technical, and financial demands.
• Schedule management: Continuously tracking and adjusting timelines to address delays, prioritize tasks, and maintain alignment with evolving project requirements.
• Quality control: Implementing rigorous checks to ensure design integrity, material standards, and construction accuracy that meet both client specifications and industry benchmarks.
• Monitoring progress: Systematically evaluating task completion, budget adherence, and workflow efficiency through tools like Gantt charts or progress reports.
• Mitigating risks: Proactively identifying potential challenges (e.g., budget overruns, design conflicts) and developing contingency plans to minimize disruptions.

➡️ Keep reading to get our risk mitigation template that you can use.

• Maintaining compliance: Ensuring all designs and construction practices adhere to local building codes, zoning laws, and safety regulations to avoid legal or operational issues.
• Facilitate communication: Fostering transparent, timely dialogue among clients, contractors, and teams to resolve conflicts, share updates, and maintain collaborative momentum.

The 6-step project management process for architects

Here’s a TL;DR our 6-step project management process for architects that you can use: 

• Define Project Scope: Establish goals, deliverables, and boundaries while collaborating with clients to prevent scope creep.
• Develop a Project Schedule: Create timelines using tools like Gantt charts and Kanban boards to visualize milestones and dependencies. Plan and prepare for risks.
• Resource Allocation: Strategically assign contractors, materials, and budgets.
• Facilitate Communication: Use integrated communication tools to streamline collaboration among teams and contractors.
• Monitor Progress: Track milestones, assess quality standards, and adjust plans as needed using dashboards and automation tools.
• Set Up Time Tracking: Manage billable hours and expenses through a time tracking tool for accurate billing.

Let’s go over each step in more detail:👇

1. Define Project Scope

The first step in the project management process for architects is to define the project scope.

This includes:

• Clearly defining the goals of the project.
• Stating the deliverables of the project, such as conceptual designs and construction drawings.

You can use SmartDoc, a native documentation tool that helps you brainstorm ideas for risk management, build checklists, or create project proposals.

It’s also possible to invite your teammates, work simultaneously, and see all the edits made in real-time.

• Defining the acceptance criteria for the project and each task.
• Defining the boundaries to align with the client’s vision and constraints.
• Mapping out tasks and responsibilities.

You want to collaborate with your stakeholders, including employees and clients, to document these objectives, requirements, and exclusions in a scope statement.

💡 Pro Tip: You can visually represent your scope and workflow via a whiteboard, which is ideal for top-level workflow visualisation.

Whiteboards help architects get a bird’s eye view of the project management process that you can then pitch to your clients.

You can check out how to create and use a whiteboard in SmartSuite:

➡️ Clear scope management between your stakeholders will prevent what we call ‘’scope creep’’ in the industry, where additional tasks are constantly being added.

2. Develop a Project Schedule

Next up, you want to create a realistic timeline that outlines the key milestones, dependencies, and deadlines for each task in the scope:

• Break the project into stages (e.g., planning, design, construction, post-construction) and assign durations to each phase.

Architects can use SmartSuite’s customizable Kanban board to manage tasks: 👇

You can play around with our Kanban template here.

Or you can learn more about the Kanban boards at SmartSuite and how you can set them up:

• Use tools like Gantt charts to visualize timelines and dependencies for better coordination among stakeholders.

➡️ Pro Tip: Gantt charts help you highlight dependencies to create the project roadmap and enable your stakeholders to visualize it.

Learn more about SmartSuite’s Gantt chart view:

• Regularly update the schedule based on progress reports to address delays or changes.
• Risks: Last but not least, architects need to plan for potential risks that can occur in the project management process, such as unexpected expenses, requests, and conflicts.

The best project leaders are both preparing for and tracking potential risks and bottlenecks that could impact the architectural project’s success.

Architects can use SmartSuite’s project risks and issues template to visualize the risks associated with your project: 🔽

Here are the fields that we have in our customizable risk management template:

• Likelihood of the risk of occurring, such as a budget overrun due to inaccurate cost estimates – from 1–5.
• The potential impact that could have on the project’s outcome – from 1–5.
• The total risk score, which is calculated by multiplying the likelihood of the risk by its potential impact on the project.
• The mitigation plan summary, where you should outline the accurate response to the crisis at hand (e.g., raise more funds from the client for the project).

You can also keep a tab of the existing issues that have been identified, such as labor shortages during the construction of the building:

You can play around and customize the risk management template here.

➡️ The architectural project is then planned out with a roadmap, timeline, resources required, risk mitigation strategies, realistic milestones and budget for each task.

3. Resource Allocation

In the resource allocation phase, architects usually assign necessary resources to the project, such as contractors, budget, equipment, and software required to do the project successfully.

➡️ Failing to plan resources might result in your project getting delayed or having to request more resources from your stakeholders.

From architects, that might be:

• Costs related to senior architects and BIM specialists who focus on conceptual modeling.
• Costs related to interior designers and sustainability experts.
• Costs related to junior architects and drafters who handle documentation.

I’d recommend that architects use SmartSuite’s Card View to visualize all of the stakeholders involved in the projects:

You want to strategically plan out your resources because you want to minimize waste and make sure that every dollar spent will be going to the success of the project.

💡 Pro Tip: You can identify all of the stakeholders that will be involved in the project with SmartSuite’s Member Directory, which lets you view team availability and assign tasks based on capacity and skillset.

Architects and keep and update a Member Directory to be able to engage professionals as early as possible to find out how busy they are and whether they’d have the capacity to help you.

➡️ This is also a good opportunity to figure out where the gaps are in terms of skillsets.

4. Figure Out The Communication

It’s easy to get lost in the details, especially when you’re dealing with enterprise project management as an architect.

This proves to be more difficult if you’re managing a remote team that works all over the world on your projects.

You can unite your architectural design team and the contractors you work with by facilitating communication directly within SmartSuite’s design record.

Inside the platform, it is possible to ‘’@’’ someone, add notes or attach an image, and view the design, sketches and wireframes — all without needing to shift context or log into an external system like Slack.

5. Monitor The Project’s Progress

During the project itself, you need to track the progress against the project plan and original scope.

You can do this by:

• Tracking milestones by having bi-weekly and/or weekly catch-ups with your team members.
• Ensuring alignment with quality standards as the work is being done.
• Assessing the work done by the various contractors during the construction project.
• Adjusting plans as needed to keep the architectural project on time.
• Addressing any emerging challenges.
• Stepping in to help the more junior architects if there are issues.

But how can you realistically do that at a glance without having to spend hours messaging everyone individually?

You can monitor the progress of the project via a custom dashboard that you can build inside SmartSuite, where architects can aggregate any data into a single view: 🔽

You won’t have to dig for information from all over the place. 

Instead, you can understand relationships, evaluate dependencies, and track metrics that measure the state of your architectural project.

What’s more, you can use SmartSuite's dynamic widgets to embed charts, calculate and track metrics, or summarize in tables – which is commonly used for design-related tasks.

➡️ This helps the architects who use SmartSuite to identify obstacles and take appropriate action on tasks that are taking too long to get done or when someone is waiting on a dependency.

What’s more, you can set up automations to track your team’s task progress using SmartSuite’s no-code automation builder.

Here’s how it works:

• Select fields (e.g., due dates, linked records, priority levels) to structure task data.
• Apply automation rules, such as recurring tasks (e.g., weekly check-ins) or status-based triggers (e.g., auto-assign tasks when marked "In Progress").
• Link related records (e.g., you can connect a "Design Phase" task to a "QA Phase" task) to visualize dependencies.

6. Set Up Time Tracking

I understand that architects often utilize time tracking software to manage their projects, track expenses, and ensure accurate billing for clients.

This is why you need to set up time tracking to calculate your and/or your team’s billable hours so you can adequately pay them.

Here’s how tracking time sheets for freelancers and/or employees looks inside SmartSuite’s time tracking template:

Your architectural contractors can submit the hours they’ve worked and the type of work they have done, so you can track your spending.

You can also add a field with our customizable platform for ‘’work summary’’ so the workers can explain their output for the billed hours.

➡️ Pro Tip: You can build a place where you can track all your employees, including their titles, phone numbers, offices, emails, salaries, and statuses.

You can play around and customize the time tracking template here.

Top 3 project management tools for architects in 2025

Lastly, I wanted to introduce you to the 3 best project management platforms for architects on the market in 2025: 👇

1. SmartSuite

SmartSuite (that’s us) offers the best project management tools for architects with its user-friendly interface, native communication tools, dynamic request forms, and a workflow builder.

Our platform adapts to your business’s unique needs and helps you build a flexible and scalable workspace to manage client requests, sales pipelines, architectural projects, and house modelling.

End-to-end project management

SmartSuite offers a bird’s eye view into your architectural process lifecycle, including planning, budgeting, monitoring, and refinement.

Our platform helps you manage all your processes to win in a competitive market through integrated features.

• Automate workflows: You can create linear to multi-sequence workflows to set recurring tasks on autopilot. 

With pre-built actions, triggers, and conditional logic, architects can automate tasks like updating the status when a property is sold or a prospect becomes a client.

• 200+ pre-built templates: Access our pre-built templates for use cases such as construction projects, home remodel projects, and more.

• Advanced reporting: You can build configurable reports to visualize your organizational, departmental, and team goals and KPIs. 

It is possible to choose from and add 50+ widgets within each report, such as charts, forms, databases, tables, etc., to build powerful reports to share with your clients.

Team collaboration

SmartSuite offer a range of built-in communication and collaboration tools to let you have real-time conversations in the context of your workspace. 

Here are the key features that make collaboration a breeze in SmartSuite:

• Native communication tools include group chats, private conversations, and email integrations.
• Comments and @mentions to share quick updates, nudge teammates, or add new people to the conversation.

• The Activity history tab captures all the record updates, edits, and comments and lets you learn what each team member has been up to.

Dynamic request forms

SmartSuite automates the collection of prospects' data and requests through integrated request forms. 

With our drag-and-drop builder, you can add or remove fields, change field type, or add custom fields like dropdown menus. 

You can also add multimedia items, such as images, videos, or GIFs, to provide more context to clients.

One outstanding feature is our dynamic forms. Architects can show or hide fields based on respondents’ previous responses by leveraging conditional logic. This lets you:

• Create branching logic in your forms.
• Display only relevant questions to each respondent.
• Customize the form experience based on user input.

For example,

• When a lead selects a property type (e.g., residential, commercial, industrial), the form can dynamically filter and display only relevant options in subsequent fields.
• The form can show or hide certain property options or additional questions based on a prospect's indicated budget range.

SmartSuite Pricing

SmartSuite offers a forever-free plan that lets you get access to 250+ automation actions, team collaboration tools, multi-dashboard views, and more. 

And, when you need more functionality, we've got four feature-packed pricing plans with a 14-day free trial:

• Team: Starts at $10/user/month, including SmartSuite AI, Gantt charts, timeline views, 5000 automation runs, and time tracking.
• Professional: Starts at $25/user/per month, including two-factor authentication, Gmail & Outlook integrations, resource management, and advanced permission control.
• Enterprise: Starts at $35/user/month, including 500,000 automation actions, audit logs, data loss prevention, and 50,000 monthly API calls.
• Signature: Customized plan tailored to your organization’s needs and team size.

2. Wrike

Wrike is a project management platform that helps bridge the gap between office planning and field execution.

The tool’s framework supports complex construction and architectural workflows while maintaining clarity across all project stages.

Wrike's Top Features

• Custom request forms: You can build custom forms to streamline the request process, expedite client approval, and add incoming requests to your task databases.
• Interactive Gantt charts: You’ll be able to get a granular view of task dependencies and milestones.
• Project resource planning: Architects can estimate the project's resource requirements and ensure each project gets enough resources (e.g., team members, budgets) and time to achieve the project’s goals.

➡️ You can check out our comprehensive Wrike review, where we go over the platform’s functionality in more detail.

Wrike's Pricing

Wrike’s pricing has a free plan with features like email integration, custom work view, and enterprise-grade security.

The platform has four paid plans with a 14-day free trial:

• Team: Start at $9.80 per user/month, including custom workflows, 20 free collaborators, and unlimited request forms.
• Business: Start at $24.80 per user/month, includes up to 200 users, Adobe Creative Cloud Extensions, and nested projects.
• Enterprise: Unlimited users with customizable data analysis tools and third-party integrations. Contact sales to get a quote.
• Pinnacle: Native integration with Power BI, locked spaces, and budgeting features. Contact sales for a quote.

3. Monday.com

Monday.com offers a highly visual and intuitive platform for managing architectural operations, featuring a colorful interface and flexible boards.

The platform is ideal for visual project management for architects and team collaboration.

Monday.com's Top Features

• Document management: The platform offers an integrated collaborative document feature to build project timelines, SOPs, proposals, store files, and other assets in a central location.
• Team workload management: Architects can use the capacity planning dashboard to oversee each member's workload. Based on the capacity planning report, reduce or increase resources for efficient allocation.
• Communication board: You’ll be able to interact with your clients, share real-time updates, and ask for their feedback on different projects without switching to an external app.

➡️ You can check out our in-depth Monday review, where we go over the tool’s functionality in more detail.

Monday.com's Pricing

Monday’s pricing consists of a free trial for up to 2 users and a 14-day free trial for the following four paid tiers:

• Basic: Starts at $17 per user/month, including 5GB storage, Kanban boards, shareable forms, and two-factor authentication.
• Standard: Starts at $20 per user/month, including 250 automated actions/month, Zoom integration, 3 additional views (Timeline, Calendar, and Map), and 20GB storage.
• Pro: Starts at $32 per user/month, including 25,000 automated actions/month, unlimited guest access, custom-branded forms, and 100GB file storage.
• Enterprise: Advanced analytics, administration control, and enhanced privacy. Contact sales for a quote.

What are the benefits of using project management software for architects

The main benefits of using project management software for architects include:

• Streamlining task management: Organizing tasks efficiently, ensuring timely completion within budget constraints with tools like a Timeline view and a Kanban view.
• Improved communication and collaboration: Architects can communicate with the different contractors and clients all in one place, under the tasks.
• Increased efficiency in the long run: Task management tools help you break down complex projects into smaller tasks with defined roles and map out dependencies, removing bottlenecks.
• Cost and resource control: Budget tracking tools prevent overspending.
• Risk mitigation: Tools like SmartSuite help you map out the different risks, such as regulatory changes and budget overruns, so you can brainstorm mitigation strategies.
• Client satisfaction with reporting and dashboards that foster transparent communication, adherence to timelines, and an overview of the project’s progress.

Next Steps For Architects: Get Started With SmartSuite For Free

Well, that was it – our complete guide on project management for architects.

If you’re an architect looking to streamline your project management workflows and ensure a timely and on-budget project delivery, you can give SmartSuite a chance with our free plan.

SmartSuite’s platform offers just the right customization, native collaboration capabilities, and a library of more than 200 project management templates to help architects create and maintain a project management workflow.

Here’s what's in it for your team when you try SmartSuite:

• Access to a generous free plan with features including multi-board views (Kanban, Chart, Map, Timeline, Card, and Calendar), 100 automations/month, and 40+ field types, including formula and linked record fields.
• No-code automation builder to set up to 500,000 trigger/action workflows.
• Built-in productivity tools, including time tracking, status tracking, and checklists.
• Team collaboration and planning tools such as whiteboards and SmartSuite docs.
• Resource management across projects and teams.
• 40+ field types, including the option to add your custom fields.

Sign up for a free plan to test the water or get a 14-day free trial to explore all its amazing features.

Or, if you’d like to talk to our team of experts, schedule a demo.

Read More

• The 10 Best Project Management Software For Engineers: We break down the top 10 project management solutions built with engineers in mind in 2025. 
• Monday vs. ClickUp vs. SmartSuite: We review each tool's features, pros and cons, and reviews to help you make an informed decision.
• Top 10 Wrike Alternatives Every Project Manager Should Consider: For teams looking for an affordable, intuitive, and customizable Wrike alternative.
• Top 10 Monday Alternatives to Streamline Your Workflows (Features & Cost): For project leaders looking for affordable and intuitive Monday.com alternatives.
• 10 Best Project Management Software for Construction in 2025: A useful guide if you operate in the construction industry and you’re looking for a project management app.
• 10 Best Enterprise Project Management Software: Find more about the best Enterprise-grade project management solutions on the market.
• 10 Best Project Management Tools For Remote Teams In 2025: Learn more about the best project management tools for remote teams in 2025.
• 10 Best Project Management Tools For Consultants In 2025: Find out the best project management solutions for consultants.

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