When you’re juggling a complex build, short deadlines, and many moving parts, time is a valuable commodity. And there’s one task that tends to consume precious hours for civil engineers—report writing.
Report writing is one of those tasks that’s critical but is tedious, and, dare we say, boring. It typically involves a lot of copying, pasting, writing, calculating, and verifying the data before formatting the report. On top of that, large-scale projects will require multiple reports weekly, and comprehensive engineering reports can take days to produce.
It’s one of the biggest gripes we’ve heard from our clients in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) sectors. It’s also a big motivator for us when creating Citation, an AI-powered automation tool that significantly reduces the time it takes for you to write a report.
If you’re tired of pressing Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V, and want to free up your time to do more valuable work, then we’d like to introduce you to Citation. But first, we’ll go over some of the common challenges with the current way of writing engineering reports.
Manual data collection is slow, laborious, and complicated. You have to pull in data from multiple sources and verify them. At times, you may find yourself waiting around to receive more data from your colleague or another team. This takes a lot of time and can keep you from doing other important tasks. Manual work is also hard to manage when you have a large volume of data to gather.
After collecting data, you’ll need to process it. This means sorting and analysing it, which can take hours or even days, delaying any decision-making process. Plus, complex calculations and analyses can be time-consuming, especially when dealing with large datasets.
Your report is likely riddled with human errors when the process is done manually. Mistakes can happen when copying or calculating data, and even a small error can lead to a wildly inaccurate report. Manual report writing can also lead to inconsistencies and miscommunication, especially when multiple teams are involved.
Before you can press send, you’ll need to ensure your report is well-structured and formatted properly, and this involves dealing with text format, images, maps, tables, and graphs. You’ll also need to review and edit for consistency and accuracy.
Citation’s AI-powered intelligence can help you generate a report in minutes based on a template you create or a previous report. It understands engineering terminologies and legal terms, and can quickly whip up a near-complete report with all the data you need. You’ll spend less time writing, calculating, and drawing up tables, and graphs.
AI-powered calculation minimises the risk of human errors, such as misplacing data or inputting incorrect information. By eliminating errors, you don’t have to worry about rework, which can significantly delay report completion.
Citation integrates data directly from your physical site through an integration with a Geographical Information System (GIS). You can pull real-time data from various sources and get a comprehensive map in seconds. The built-in AI can automatically label and annotate maps and images, saving you the need to manually label each image. This is a huge time saver when dealing with large amounts of visual data.
Citation is not just a report-writing tool; it also works as a document manager. You can import any files you need to write your report, and easily search for the documents you need. Additionally, Citation comes with enterprise-grade security to protect sensitive engineering or project data.
One of the biggest time savers is the use of customisable report templates. These templates standardise the structure and format of your reports, ensuring consistency across multiple projects and teams. You don’t have to copy and paste a previous report every single time you need to write a report. Instead, you simply choose a pre-built template and ask the AI to generate the necessary data and text to produce the report quickly.
A major part of civil engineering reports is ensuring that the data complies with the latest engineering and building standards. Engineers can quickly check off necessary compliance requirements as they go, saving time compared to manually verifying that all standards are met at the end of the reporting process.
The amount of time you save with Citation, especially when producing multiple reports at the same time, is fairly significant and a game-changer to report writing. Some of the benefits include:
1. Productivity boost: You complete more projects in less time, leading to increased productivity and profitability.
2. Quicker project turnaround: Automated report generation translates to faster project turnaround, allowing companies to meet tight deadlines and deliver projects on time.
3. Improved data accuracy: AI decreases the risk of human error, leading to more precise and reliable reports.
4. Project cost reduction: By reducing the time spent on report writing, AEC companies can reduce project costs as they are using fewer man-hours now.
5. Improved morale: Nobody likes doing manual, repetitive tasks. Your employees will thank you for an automated report writing workflow. And by freeing up their time from report writing, engineers can focus on more critical tasks, such as analysis, design, and problem-solving.
The way we write reports in the AEC industry will change, and it is only a matter of time. The current method of producing complex engineering reports or any project report is too long, complicated, and prone to error. Citation can automate your reporting process within a fraction of the time that you would using manual methods.
It’s easy to set up and customise and integrates with other tools, making it an asset for any company. If you’re tired of waiting for days for your reports, AI-driven Citation can speed up your reporting process, help you make better decisions, and reduce costs in the long run.
