Plan work in phases

Architecture and engineering practices plan and bill by phase: the brief, the concept, the coordinated design, the technical design, construction. The phases up to the technical design end with the client approving them, and that approval is the moment the phase’s fee becomes invoiceable and its scope stops changing for free; construction is billed against its completion instead. Onplana models a phase as an epic, each sign-off or completion point as a milestone, and each fee share as a milestone line on the quote linked to one of those milestones, so the programme, the fee schedule and the hours are one record.

Start from a phase template

Three built-in templates lay a building project out this way. All three are available on every plan, and on every plan the project’s phases show as groups in the task list and as a filter on the Gantt. Adding, renaming or reordering a phase, and moving a task from one phase to another, are part of epics, on Professional and up.

Template	Phases	What it carries
RIBA Plan of Work (Architecture)	Stages 0 to 7 of the 2020 Plan of Work	22 tasks with hours, a client sign-off task and milestone closing each of Stages 1 to 4, three risks
AIA Design Phases (Architecture, US)	Schematic design, design development, construction documents, bidding, construction administration	17 tasks with hours, an owner approval closing each of the three design phases, the customary 15/20/40/5/20 fee split named in the copy
Construction Documents and Closeout	Construction documents issue, preconstruction, construction administration, substantial completion, closeout documents, final completion and payment	18 tasks with hours, five milestones from the issued documents to the project closed out, three risks

The RIBA and AIA templates run the whole appointment. Construction Documents and Closeout starts where the drawings are issued and goes deep on the part the other two cover in a task or two: submittals and RFIs, the punch list, the closeout documents, retainage and final payment, and the 11-month warranty walkthrough. In RIBA terms it covers Stages 5 and 6. See the construction closeout template on onplana.com.

1. From the sidebar, open Projects and select New Project.
2. Name the project, then pick the template in the Template picker, under Built-in templates, and select Create Project.
3. The project opens with one epic per stage, the tasks inside them, and the milestones on the Gantt chart as diamonds.

The durations and hours are a starting shape for a mid-sized project. Resize them once the appointment is agreed; the structure is what the template is for.

Tip

Every task in all three templates carries an estimate on purpose. Progress and estimates are kept per task; Onplana does not yet roll them up into a progress figure for the phase. A phase measure is planned, and tasks with hours give it something to measure against.

What a phase is in Onplana

A phase is an epic: a named, coloured group that tasks belong to, in order. Renaming a stage is renaming the epic; adding a stage is adding an epic and moving tasks into it (both on Professional and up). The task list can be grouped by epic, with the number of tasks in each group, and the Gantt filtered by it, on every plan. Because a timesheet hour is logged against a task, every hour belongs to the phase its task is in.

Each sign-off is a milestone, and so are the points the later stages close on: practical completion and handover in RIBA (Stages 0 and 7 carry none), contract award and substantial and final completion in AIA. A milestone has a date, it shows on the Gantt, and it can be linked to a milestone line on the quote, which is how a fee share is recognised.

Quote the fee per stage

On the deal, price the engagement as milestone lines, one per fee share, each against one of the template’s milestones: in RIBA the Stage 1 to 4 sign-offs, then practical completion and handover; in AIA the three owner approvals, then contract award and the two completions. Send the quote for the client to accept. When the deal is won, the lines become the project’s milestone schedule, and each amount is recognised as revenue when its linked milestone completes. The stage’s fee then reaches the margin report in the period its milestone was completed, beside the project’s approved hours and cost.

The RIBA appointment leaves the split to the practice; Stages 2 to 5 usually carry most of it. The AIA tradition has a customary split of 15% schematic design, 20% design development, 40% construction documents, 5% bidding and 20% construction administration. Both are starting points, not rules. See Choose a billing model for how milestone amounts are recognised and Quote and win for the quote itself.

Read a phase from its tasks

Hours land on tasks, and tasks belong to epics, so the hours a phase has used are the approved hours on the tasks inside it. Group the task list by epic, or filter the Gantt by it, to see a phase’s tasks with their estimates and progress. Onplana does not total a phase’s estimate, hours or progress for you yet, so comparing a phase with its fee share is a sum you make from its tasks.

Caution

The margin report groups by client, project and person. It does not yet cut revenue and cost by phase, so per-phase profitability is a comparison you make from the hours and the fee share today, not a row the report gives you. A phase cut is planned once one firm has run a project on these templates.

Migrated schedules

A schedule imported from Microsoft Project arrives with its stages as summary tasks rather than epics, with dependencies and costs intact. Use the templates for new appointments; an imported plan keeps its own structure, and the phase cut, when it lands, will read summary tasks as phases on projects that have no epics.

Change after a sign-off

A client change after a stage sign-off is the most common source of unbilled design hours. File the ask against the client, decide whether it is in scope, and if it is not, add a line to the quote and send it again. The client’s requests view shows which asks became work without being re-priced. See Run your pipeline.