Engineering consulting software that runs on chat, not Gantt charts

Stop reconciling timesheets with project plans every Friday. Ask hice.ai who's overrunning, who's free, and which deliverable is at risk — get the answer in seconds.

Why MS Project and a shared drive aren't enough

Engineering firms juggle 40+ concurrent projects, each with its own phase structure, deliverable codes and client billing rules. Most teams end up with a Gantt chart that nobody updates and an Excel workbook that nobody trusts.

Senior engineers spend 4-6 hours a week reconciling timesheets against WBS codes
Design-phase overruns surface two weeks late, when the margin is already gone
PMs can't tell who's available next month without calling each team lead
Subcontractor hours and travel costs slip through to client invoices unbilled
Stage-gate handovers (concept → detailed → as-built) lose context between PMs

Ask, don't open a tool

hice.ai replaces the project-tracker-plus-spreadsheet stack with a chat that reads your hours, contracts and deliverables. PMs and partners get straight answers without opening a single tab.

«Who's the best structural engineer free in March for 3 weeks?» → list ranked by skill match, billable rate and current load
«Show me projects burning more than 80% of budget at the concept stage» → table with PM, hours logged, remaining scope
«Compute the May amount to invoice for Thornton Highway, T&M plus expenses» → billable amount ready to export, approval routed to the PM

Try it in chat

Examples you can ask:

Static demo of hice's AI chat.

What you get

Phase-aware time tracking

Engineers log hours against WBS phases (concept, detailed design, site supervision) from chat or mobile — no codes to memorise.

Resource planning by discipline

See structural, MEP, civil and process engineers on one board, with skills, certifications and clearance levels indexed.

T&M plus fixed-fee billing

Mix bill rates per role, fixed fees per deliverable and expenses per project — compute compliant billable amounts in one click, ready to export.

Deliverable register with version control

Drawings, calculations and reports tracked against the contract scope, with status visible in chat.

EU data residency & GDPR

For defence, nuclear or critical-infrastructure projects: EU hosting, encryption at-rest and in-transit, granular permissions and a full audit trail.

Certified progress, not hours consumed

A large share of engineering work is billed on certified progress rather than on time, and that changes what has to be measured. Hours consumed describe what has been spent; they say nothing about what is left, and a phase that is eighty percent of the way through its budget is not necessarily eighty percent complete.

The discipline that keeps a phase honest is a fortnightly estimate of remaining effort, made by the person doing the work and recorded next to the original figure. Where the two diverge repeatedly on the same type of work, the estimating model is wrong rather than the team, and that is a correctable and rather valuable finding.

Remaining effort estimated fortnightly, next to the original
Progress certified against an objective criterion and an approver
Stage payments tied to named deliverables
Estimate-to-actual ratio tracked by work type

Planning by discipline, not by headcount

In engineering, scarcity is never general. A practice can have spare capacity across the board and still be unable to take a commission because the one person with a particular accreditation is committed elsewhere. Planning on total headcount hides exactly the number that decides.

Capacity therefore has to be computed per discipline, and the skills inventory needs a level, an evidence trail and a date of last use. Accreditations with expiry dates belong in the same place, with a warning before they lapse — the alternative is discovering an expired certification the week a submission is due.

Capacity computed per discipline, not only per person
Accreditations with expiry dates and advance warning
Skills recorded with level, evidence and last use
Concentration risk flagged where one person is critical

Traceability that survives a claim

Engineering practices carry a documentation obligation that most project tools ignore entirely. Who signed a deliverable, in which revision, on what date, and against which client instruction is not administrative overhead: it is the evidence that decides a claim or a later dispute, sometimes years afterwards.

A system that does not preserve that chain forces the firm to keep it in parallel, which is where it degrades. The requirement is unglamorous and specific — revisions kept, approvals attributed, client instructions attached to the work they changed, and an export that a lawyer can read without the system being available.

Revisions retained with author, date and approver
Client instructions attached to the work they changed
Change orders recorded before the work is executed
A complete export readable without access to the system

Real case: 60-engineer firm in London

James, COO of a structural and civil consultancy in Clerkenwell, was losing 12-14 hours a week chasing PMs for phase budgets. After three months on hice.ai, his Monday review takes 25 minutes instead of half a day. The firm recovered 9% of margin on T&M jobs by catching scope creep at week two instead of month two, and renewed two framework agreements on the strength of cleaner monthly reporting.

hice.ai vs MS Project + Excel

Feature	hice.ai	MS Project + Excel + generic ERP
Updating project status	Engineers chat their progress, AI updates the plan	PM manually edits Gantt every week
Phase-budget overrun alerts	Proactive flag when phase hits 70% of budget	Spotted in next month's report
Finding available engineers	Ask in chat, get a ranked list	Email team leads, wait two days
T&M billing data	Billable amounts from logged hours in 30 seconds	Export to Excel, reformat, send to finance
Data residency for sensitive projects	EU-hosted, encrypted, GDPR	Microsoft cloud, no opt-out
Onboarding new PM	Ask the system, it answers	Two weeks of training on the WBS scheme

FAQ

Can hice.ai handle CAPEX project codes and WBS structures from our existing ERP?+

Yes. We import your WBS from SAP, Oracle or Deltek and keep the codes synced, so finance still sees the same general-ledger mapping.

Does it support per-discipline bill rates (structural vs MEP vs civil)?+

Yes. You set bill rates by role, grade and project — the same engineer can bill £140/h on one contract and £165/h on another.

What about subcontractor and freelance engineers?+

Freelancers log hours through the same chat interface. You set their cost rate, hice.ai computes margin per assignment.

Can it prepare stage-payment billing data tied to deliverables?+

Yes. Link a billing line to a deliverable in the register — once the PM marks it complete, the billable amount is ready to export.

We work on classified defence projects. Where does the data live?+

Data is hosted in the EU, encrypted at-rest and in-transit, with granular permissions, a full audit trail and daily backups. GDPR compliant.

How does it compare with Deltek Vantagepoint?+

Deltek is a finance-first ERP — powerful, but engineers hate using it. hice.ai sits in front: engineers talk to chat, finance still gets the GL records they need.

How long to roll out across 60 people?+

Typical engineering deployment: 3 weeks. Week 1 data import and rate cards, week 2 pilot with one studio, week 3 full rollout.