Project Forms

One of the ways that I attempted to establish standards in my firm that we could apply to every project was called ProjForms - shorthand for Project Forms. 

Project Forms were literally a series of forms that were to be completed at various stages of the work. 
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This sounds a bit bureaucratic, but it was a solution to some problems that we had. 
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​Our Problems

• We sidled into most projects. At one point we definitely did not have a project. Four months later we definitely did have a project. When were we hired? 
• Our office manager was in the dark.  She only learned of the project when hours needed to be reported. But what are we calling this? Who is the client contact that gets the invoice? Is mileage reimbursed? What about plots? Etc.
• Does the client want a contract? Our professional liability insurance company definitely wants us to have a contract! What about the fee? 

You get the picture. 

Where projects intersected with the business, there wasn’t a process. Just a void.
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Over time we established 17 areas that needed to be documented on a typical project.

We used an Excel workbook to hold all the forms for each project. You can download a copy of our master workbook HERE.

​The chance that you could make use of this system is pretty slim. But take a look, I may be wrong; and you may find an idea or two that will help you improve your own systems.

If I was building this system today, I would make it an online database system. The Excel workbooks aren’t as accessible as I would like, and in most cases the information has to be entered in the workbook and then again to complete the task.

MyCorbu could be that online database!

Once I have an invoicing system worked out in MyCorbu, this business management idea is one of the things I would like to build. The tricky part will be making it flexible enough to work for most firms.