In 2025, are your project information systems good enough?
It’s a late Tuesday afternoon and you’re trying to track down changes to the mechanical layout. You know they’re in an email thread on an RFI from last week. Or was it the week before? Outlook search doesn’t help. You check Newforma. You get side-tracked when you notice several RFIs that should have been closed out and pushed back to Procore. Sync to Procore doesn’t work. You jump back to Outlook to email the GC. Distracted, you file a few emails. You question why you’re spending time on this. You remember that you still need to write up yesterday’s site visit. Back to Newforma. Save RFIs to the server and manually rewrite IDs to match your local naming convention. Frustrated, you get up to get coffee. This isn’t what you trained for, this isn’t work that feels good.
But such is the day-to-day on complex projects in 2025. A mindnumbing drudgery through disjointed, clunky software tools. On short deadlines. With a thin margin for error or delay. In 2025, with modern AI, software shouldn't be the work. Software should help do the work, and get out of the way.
Your project information systems probably aren’t good enough anymore, in 2025. We’re taking another big step to solve that with four upgrades in Cogram, built from hundreds of hours of conversations with architects and shadowing engineers who run complex jobs.
Agentic AI: When Software Knows the Project
Cogram’s new agentic AI assistant changes project information management. On a Chicago renovation, the PM had to review the last four weeks of changes to the mechanical layout. That used to mean hours of searching email chains, cross-referencing meeting notes, and calling around. With AI, it’s a single query:
“Summarize everything discussed around MEP layout changes since July 1.”
In seconds, the answer appears, linked back to the associated email threads, meeting notes and site reports, but stripped of fluff. In a dispute over tolerances, AI surfaces every relevant conversation: emails, minutes, annotated site photos, so the design lead can walk into the client meeting prepared with proof. This is project intelligence that makes full use of modern AI capabilities, and it’s the future of information management in architecture and engineering.
Drawings in Your Pocket, Field Reports in Seconds.
Picture a site walk on a rainy Thursday. The architect spots a cracked glazing panel on Level 05. She pulls up a mobile app, drops a pin on the current site plan, snaps two photos, dictates a note, and moves on.
Thirty minutes, twenty-four observations, and fifty photos later, she wraps up and hits “Submit”. Within 60 seconds, AI transcribes the voice notes, reviews photo timestamps, and creates a professional field report in her firm’s custom template. Observations carry location and status data. Linked to the right drawing set, ready to share.
Deltek Vantagepoint Integration: Core Systems Connected
If your source of truth is Deltek Vantagepoint, or another ERP, Cogram can now mirror projects automatically. On a 500‑unit housing project, the PM no longer creates single projects in Cogram manually. Instead, every project is automatically instantiated in Cogram from Deltek, with the right ID, client name, status, and staffing. Permissions follow membership rules set in Deltek.
This is especially powerful with Cogram’s Email Management Capability: automatically file emails from Outlook into matching Cogram projects, to save staff hours of repetitive filing work. Use Cogram’s Agentic Assistant and deep search across emails and attachments to quickly surface information or streamline e-discovery.
A New User Interface: Software That Gets Out of the Way
We fundamentally reworked Cogram’s interface layout, to make it easier to jump between Meeting Minutes, Email Management, Field Reports, Proposals, and Cogram’s AI Assistant in two clicks. Platform‑level navigation takes you across products; product‑level navigation gets you to specific features without guesswork.
On a fast‑moving job, that means the site engineer can open a drawing, add an observation, and jump to the Assistant for context—without hunting through deeply nested menus, that makes so much of legacy software feel click-heavy and clunky.
What This Means: Working on Projects with AI
08:05
You ask the Assistant for a week‑ending status on 21‑A135, with a focus on MEP clashes and client RFIs. It’s ready before your coffee cools.
10:30
On site, you log façade issues with photos, short voice notes, and pins dropped on drawings. Each observation takes seconds. You’re back in the car and your phone pings with a complete site report drafted by AI, ready for review in your firm’s template.
13:00
In two back-to-back OAC and Design meetings, Cogram automatically drafts minutes, captures action items, and highlights issues or risks. After each meeting, minutes are drafted in seconds, using your templates.
17:15
A flurry of emails from the client about lobby ceiling height syncs automatically to the project in Cogram, auto-filed from Outlook. You ask the Assistant
“What’s last week’s context on this, and what did we decide?”
You get an instant summary of meeting minutes and emails, with links to the signed‑off note and drawing reference.
***
These new capabilities in Cogram make it easier and faster for teams to find and act on information. If you’ve ever found yourself trawling through network drives, Outlook, and notepads, for a decision you know was made, then you’ll feel the difference the first time you try these new tools.
We’d love to meet and show you how leading architects, engineers, and builders are using Cogram on projects day-to-day.
Keep Designing. Keep Building.
-The Cogram Team
