4 Admin Tasks AI Can Take Off Your Project Manager’s Plate
How aec360 and Microsoft Copilot Are Freeing Project Managers from Busywork So They Can Focus on Delivering Results.
Project managers are the beating heart of your firm’s project delivery engine. But too often, their days are hijacked by repetitive admin work: status reports, timesheet entry and approvals, CRM updates, and long email chains. None of it moves the project forward. All of it saps time and energy.
Thanks to AI and automation in AEC-specific ERP solutions like aec360, those tedious tasks are finally off the plate—freeing up PMs to focus on what they do best: managing people, budgets, timelines, and outcomes.
Here are four admin-heavy tasks AI can eliminate or drastically streamline:
Manually pulling budget actuals, timelines, risks, and milestones into weekly reports eats up hours every week - and human error can creep in. AI copilots in aec360 can now auto-generate draft status reports using real-time ERP data, creating clear narratives tailored to executives or clients.
Instead of digging through spreadsheets and emails, PMs get an AI-drafted report they can review, tweak, and send in minutes, not hours. As a result, the updates are faster, reporting is more accurate, decision-making is more confident at every level of the project.
Timesheet approval is a dreaded black hole. Late entries. Missing codes. Misapplied time. AI agents now flag errors before they reach the PM, check for issues like missing bill rates or NTE thresholds, and auto-approve entries that meet pre-set criteria. PMs only review the exceptions, cutting time spent on timesheets by up to 80%.
And it gets better. New AI agents can also auto-generate time and expense entries by analyzing Outlook calendars, resource plans, and even email receipts. Suggested entries come with pre-filled comments, reducing time and effort for both employees and managers. It's like having a virtual assistant fill out timecards in the background, only surfacing what needs human input.
Seller-doers often neglect the CRM. It’s not because they don’t care, they’re just swamped. AI integrated with Outlook and Teams captures contacts from email signatures, identifies new stakeholders, logs interactions, and suggests updates. PMs can accept changes with a click, without ever logging into the CRM.
Long email threads waste more time than we like to admit. AI tools like Microsoft Copilot summarize conversations, highlight next steps, and even draft responses based on your firm’s tone and policy. PMs no longer have to dig through dozens of replies to get caught up or craft replies from scratch.
The Bigger Picture: Retaining PMs and Scaling Workloads
With AEC backlogs at historic highs and hiring still lagging, your firm needs to do more with your existing staff. That doesn’t mean burning out your project managers. It means giving them the tools to eliminate the low-impact work that slows them down.
That’s the promise of aec360 with Microsoft Copilot: more impact, less effort.
Webinar: Save Your Project Managers' Time with Project Automation and AI
Get a closer look at how firms are using AI to automate reporting, streamline timesheets, clean up CRM data, and cut hours of admin work, without adding more staff. Watch our on-demand webinar "Save Your Project Managers' Time with Project Automation and AI"
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