The first release of the Civil Pro Mobile application is ready and will be installed on a real live project in the next week or two. This release provides capacity to;

1. View/Edit/Add lots
2. View/Edit/Add Test requests
3. View/Edit/Add Checklists
4. Electronically complete checklists including the approval system

If you want to know more in any depth, refer to the online manual available from the support menu up the top. If you want to see what else is coming to Civil Pro Mobile (or Civil Pro itself) – as always, check the roadmap.

There have also been some changes to the Civil Pro desktop app. Some to do with the mobile application, but other things as well. For one, we have completely rewritten the report engine and separated it into its own module – you wont see any difference yet, but it is essential for the upcoming report customization functionality we want to introduce later in the year.

Civil Pro mobile is progressing nicely. The most complicated bits are transferring the significant functionality available in a windows application to the mobile device. We have just done the Test Requests (alpha version) and there is a stack of work in the simple process of making a new req. First you need to define the req itself, then there are interfaces for adding tests with the associated calculations, adding test properties and adding test coordinates (for non chainage situations).

Then there are the little behind the scenes things like the AVL override, calculating length, area and volume on updates of the geometry, the different geometry models (none, chainage, coordinate and region) and the automatic inclusion of all of these parameters when a new lot is selected.

We are now working on how we can generate the reports on the server and download to mobile so you can forward them on in the field.

Next steps are to redo the lot update and add interface – then finish the checklists.

Some screenshots to show its all happening!

We are happy to advise that our mobile applications for Civil Pro will be released in the first half of 2016. Initial functionality will include;

• Lot view/edit/add
• Checklist creation, completion and approval
• Test Request view/edit/add
• Test Req and Checklist – send by email
• Customer login integration for approvals – e.g. checklists
• Security model updates to Civil Pro windows and the web app

We expect to be beta testing in February. This will require a massive effort on the programming side, but we expect it can be achieved 🙂

Please contact us if you have any questions, or wish to be added to the beta.

Civil Pro 8 has always supported customisation of the grids in which register are viewed, and now from Civil Pro 8.8.55, users can save their layout as the default or as a named layout. This applies to the lot, test request, ATP and NCR registers.

Saving the current view

To save the current layout, simply activate the context menu by right clicking on the register grid, and select “Save Layout” from the “Views” sub menu.

You will be prompted to enter a name for the view. If you leave the name as “Default” then this view will be the view shown when the register is opened. Alternately, you can enter a name that describes the view (alphanumeric, no spaces. Underscore is allowed) and the view will be saved as a named view.

Loading a View

To load a view, simply select it from the same context menu location used to save the view. Your named views will be listed under the standard civil pro views. If a default view has been made, the default view will also be listed. If there is no custom default view, civil pro defaults to its normal view layout. You can see in the below screenshot that the lot register has two named views, Extended_Data and Perc_Comp. It also has a custom Default view.

Deleting a View

If you no longer want a view in your list, simply right click on it. You will be prompted to delete it. If you need to change a view, delete the original view and re-save it.

We have had a couple of questions about recent release of Civil Pro and why there hasn’t been a lot of new features added. This is due to a couple of things. First, Civil Pro is now quite a mature piece of software, and within its core market, it does most of the things we need it to. Secondly, and most importantly, we are developing our application across new platforms as a priority to extending our functionality. We will release more information regarding our mobile platform, but it will be released before the end of 2015.

All this aside though, we have also been working on a pet project of ours for a couple of years off and on, and we are happy to advise of the alpha release of our new cost and forecasting module for Civil Pro. This is not included with the standard release, but if you are interested in using it in alpha release, then please contact us.

This module allows recording of project costs and production, and forecasting on a monthly basis for the purposes of reporting performance against budget and cashflow.

It isn’t meant to be a substitute for a corporate accounting system, it is a replacement for the daily cost spreadsheets, and forecast spreadsheets that seem to drown project engineers and project managers on most well run projects.  We have designed our system to be quick and easy to use. It provides whole of project forecasting and ties into the schedule, all without the formulaic and other referential issues that are found in nearly every spreadsheet of any complexity.