WindoorERP Documentation 19.0

Guided journey

9- Setup the Technical Office and Site Surveys

The department between the salesperson and the saw: laser surveys, drafting queues, structural calculations and CAD submittals — set up as a department, not as a folder of drawings.

13 steps about 18 min Advanced Technical office manager or chief draughtsman
Start the journey

Most ERPs stop at sales and manufacturing and assume a drawing appears in between. A fenestration contract does not work that way: somebody has to measure a building that is still being built, decide what a tolerance allows, produce shop drawings a consultant will stamp, and only then release the factory. WindoorERP gives that work its own department, and this path sets it up.

Two things here have no equivalent elsewhere and are worth the most attention: the survey master options, which decide whether two surveyors describe the same opening the same way, and the split between the pre-quote survey and the production survey — the second is what releases material to the saw, so it carries an approval the first does not.

By the end you will be able to

  • Create the technical office as a real department: drafting teams, request types, stages and their own tags
  • Fix the surveyor's vocabulary — finishes, fittings, floor levels, site conditions — so two surveyors describe the same opening the same way
  • Run the two surveys a fenestration contract needs: the pre-quote survey and the production survey that releases the factory
  • Put surveyors on the mobile field portal, logging laser measurements and site photos from the scaffolding
  • Handle what comes back from site: observations, customer messages and re-visit requests
  • Queue, assign and track CAD drawing requests instead of forwarding drawings by email
  • Carry structural calculations and consultant submittals against the project they belong to
  • See the drafting backlog, the weekly delivery commitments and who is overloaded, before a submittal is late

Before you start

  • Administrator rights, and the Technical Tasks and Project modules installed
  • Your profile series and designs in place — "4- Setup Your Product Catalogue and Designs"
  • Surveyors and draughtsmen as users, with phones or tablets they will carry on site
  • A decision, before you start, on what your technical office actually produces: shop drawings, structural calculations, consultant submittals, or all three

The path

01

Create the technical office

  1. 01 Build the drafting teams and request types Start by admitting the technical office exists: drafting units, calculation units, the types of request they receive, and the stages a request moves through. Everything later in this path is queued against these. 1 min Configure technical teams, request stages, request types, tags, and survey templates
  2. 02 Fix the surveyor's vocabulary The most underrated screen in WindoorERP. Finishes, fittings, floor levels, locations and site conditions become fixed lists, so "anodised" and "anodized" and "ANOD" stop being three different answers and a survey can actually be reported on. 2 min Maintain site survey master dropdown options for finishes, fittings, floors, locations, and site conditions
02

Shape how a contract runs

  1. 03 Set project stages and roles A fenestration contract is not one task: it is a survey, a submittal, an approval, a release, a delivery and a handover, usually per floor or per elevation. Set the stages and the roles once, here. 2 min Configure project stages, task workflows, project roles, activity plans, and tags
  2. 04 Template the project and its analytics A tower and a villa are different sizes of the same project shape. A template creates that shape in one click, and the analytic account attached to it is what later answers whether the job made money. 1 min Configure project templates, default analytical accounts, and visibility rules
03

Measure the building

  1. 05 Run the pre-quote and production surveys Two surveys, deliberately: the pre-quote survey prices the job, the production survey releases material to the saw. The second is approved before anything is cut, because a wrong measurement approved here is aluminium on the floor. 2 min Manage pre-quote surveys, production manufacturing surveys, and survey approvals
  2. 06 Put the surveyor on a phone, on site Laser opening measurements, site photographs and checklists, entered where the opening is. A survey typed up back at the office the next morning is a survey with a memory in it. 2 min Execute mobile site surveys, installation checklists, quality audits, and surveyor tracking
  3. 07 Handle what comes back from site Observations the surveyor could not resolve, messages from the customer's engineer, and requests to come back. Give these a route now, or they will live in a WhatsApp thread nobody can search later. 1 min Process field portal observations, customer survey messages, and re-visit requests
04

Turn measurements into drawings

  1. 08 Queue the drawing requests A drawing request is a work item with an owner and a date, not an email. Submit them, assign them, and the drafting queue becomes something a manager can actually load-balance. 1 min Submit, assign, and track technical engineering requests and CAD drawing queues
  2. 09 Give each draughtsman their own queue The other half of the same screen: what one draughtsman should do today, in order. A shared queue that nobody owns personally is a queue that grows. 1 min Execute assigned individual technical tasks and manage personal drafting queues
  3. 10 Carry the calculations and submittals Wind load calculations, structural checks and the consultant submittal pack belong to the project, not to a draughtsman's drive. Attach them here and an approval two years later is a search, not an excavation. 1 min Coordinate technical engineering projects, structural calculations, and CAD submittals
05

Run the contract

  1. 11 Track the contract and its milestones Above the drawings sits the contract: milestone dates, the budget, and how much of the job is actually finished. This is the screen a project manager lives in and a consultant asks about. 1 min Manage master architectural projects, milestone schedules, and budget allocations
  2. 12 Supervise the tasks across departments One project touches sales, technical, factory and site. The master task view is where those four stop being four systems and become one programme with one critical path. 1 min Plan and supervise master project tasks across all departments and stages
06

Watch the drafting load

  1. 13 See the backlog before it bites Overdue requests, this week's commitments and engineering hours in one place. The technical office is usually the first bottleneck in a growing fenestration company, and this is the screen that says so early. 2 min Analyze overdue drafting requests, weekly delivery commitments, and engineering timesheets

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