You didn’t study engineering to spend half your week on paperwork.
But for most engineers and project managers at mid-tier construction, civil, earthworks and mining firms in Western Australia, that’s exactly what’s happening. The admin load, reporting, approvals, document management, coordination, has grown faster than the tools most firms use to manage it.
At LAI Solutions, we work exclusively with mid-tier engineering, construction, civil, earthworks and mining firms across Perth WA. We build custom software, AI Workflow Solutions and AI agents for them, and the same pattern shows up every time we start with a new client: the admin burden is larger than anyone has formally measured, and nobody has done anything about it because there hasn’t been an obvious way to fix it without buying new software or adding headcount.
This post puts a number on the problem and shows what mid-tier firms can actually do about it.
17 hours per week – LAI Solutions internal research across engineering and construction clients in Western Australia
The Number That Surprised Us: 17 Hours a Week
Seventeen hours a week. That’s what LAI Solutions has consistently found when we map the actual time engineers and project managers at mid-tier WA firms spend on administrative tasks, not engineering work, not client delivery, not problem-solving on site. Admin.
Across a 45-hour working week, that’s roughly 38% of working time absorbed by tasks that don’t move a project forward. For a firm running five engineers, that’s the equivalent of two full-time people whose entire week disappears into admin.
The number isn’t based on surveys or industry reports. It comes from the time-mapping work we do at the start of every LAI engagement, walking through a firm’s actual week, task by task, and measuring where the hours go.
Where the Admin Time Actually Goes
The 17 hours doesn’t sit in one place. It’s distributed across four task categories that, individually, each feel manageable — until you add them up:
| Admin Task | Estimated Hrs/Week | What It Involves |
|---|---|---|
| Project reporting | ~5 hrs | Compiling progress updates, formatting reports, distributing by email |
| Approval workflows | ~4 hrs | Chasing sign-offs, following up on outstanding approvals, re-sending documents |
| Document management | ~4 hrs | Filing, version control, locating drawings or specs, responding to doc requests |
| Internal coordination | ~4 hrs | Status update meetings, email threads, communicating between site and office |
| Total | ~17 hrs | Per engineer/week – LAI Solutions internal research, WA engineering & construction clients |
None of these tasks require an engineer’s training. All of them require an engineer’s time, because the systems in place don’t give them a choice.
Tools like Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, and Claude are increasingly being used by engineering teams to speed up parts of this work, drafting reports faster, summarising meeting notes, structuring approval requests. But they don’t eliminate the underlying manual process. They just help people get through it slightly faster.
The real fix is automation, removing the manual steps entirely, not accelerating them.
What 17 Hours a Week Costs Your Firm in Real Terms
Admin time isn’t free. Every hour an engineer spends on reporting, approvals, or document management is an hour that isn’t billable, isn’t productive on site, and isn’t contributing to the work your firm was hired to do.
Run the numbers on a mid-tier firm with five engineers at an average loaded cost of $120/hour:
- 17 hours/week per engineer × 5 engineers = 85 hours/week absorbed by admin
- 85 hours × $120/hr = $10,200/week in admin overhead
- $10,200 × 48 working weeks = approximately $490,000 per year
Half a million dollars a year in engineering capacity, consumed by tasks that don’t require engineering expertise.
That’s the number most principals and directors haven’t formally calculated, because the cost is distributed invisibly across everyone’s week rather than appearing as a line item on a budget.
Calculate the admin cost for your own firm
The Downstream Effect: What Doesn’t Get Done
The cost of admin isn’t only financial. When engineers and project managers are buried in administrative tasks, there are second-order effects that don’t show up in a time-tracking spreadsheet:
- Site issues get picked up later because the project manager is catching up on reports
- Approval bottlenecks slow construction programmes, one outstanding sign-off holds up the next phase
- Document errors multiply when version control depends on individuals rather than systems
- Good engineers leave, not because of the engineering work, but because they didn’t sign up to be administrators
The firms that LAI Solutions works with don’t have an engineering capability problem. They have a systems problem. The engineering talent is there. The admin overhead is what’s getting in the way.
What Happens When Engineering Firms Recover That Time
The question worth asking isn’t just ‘how much time is lost to admin?’ It’s ‘what becomes possible when you get it back?’
When LAI Solutions builds AI Workflow Solutions and AI agents for mid-tier engineering and construction firms, the change isn’t just efficiency, it’s capacity. Engineers spend their time on engineering. Project managers spend their time managing projects. Principals get visibility across the business without chasing updates.
For SMS Group, automating their approval workflow reduced approval time by 75%. For McGill Engineering, automating project setup cut setup time by 70%. For Advisory by Astrid, document turnaround improved by 80%.
These aren’t software implementations. They’re AI Workflow Solutions and AI agents built inside the Microsoft 365 environment these firms already use, SharePoint, Power Automate, Teams, Microsoft Copilot. No new software. No new logins. Results in weeks.
See what recovering admin time looks like in practice
Is Your Firm Above or Below the Average?
The 17-hour figure is an average across mid-tier engineering and construction firms in Western Australia. Some firms are above it. Some are below. But very few principals or directors know exactly where their firm sits, because the time has never been formally measured.
The AI Readiness Assessment LAI Solutions offers is designed to answer that question. It maps your firm’s current admin load, identifies the highest-impact automation opportunities inside your existing Microsoft 365 environment, and gives you a clear picture of what’s possible — before you commit to anything.
If you’re running a mid-tier engineering, construction, civil, earthworks or mining firm in Perth WA and your engineers are spending time on tasks that don’t require their expertise, it’s worth finding out how much time, and what it’s costing you.
How to automate approval workflows inside Microsoft 365
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Frequently Asked Questions
How much time do engineers spend on admin?
Based on LAI Solutions’ internal research across engineering and construction clients in Western Australia, mid-tier engineers and project managers spend approximately 17 hours per week on administrative tasks, including project reporting, approval workflows, document management, and internal coordination. This represents roughly 38% of a standard working week.
What is the average admin time for an engineer in Australia?
LAI Solutions’ research with mid-tier engineering and construction firms in Perth WA consistently shows 17 hours per week absorbed by non-engineering admin. This figure is drawn from time-mapping work conducted at the start of LAI engagements, not industry surveys, it reflects actual task-level measurement rather than self-reported estimates.
How do engineering firms reduce admin time?
Mid-tier engineering firms in Perth WA are reducing admin time by automating the four highest-overhead task categories: project reporting, approval workflows, document management, and internal coordination. The most effective approach builds AI Workflow Solutions and AI agents inside the Microsoft 365 environment the firm already uses, Power Automate, SharePoint, Teams, and Microsoft Copilot, rather than introducing new software. Tools like ChatGPT and Claude can also be layered in to accelerate tasks like report drafting and document summarisation. LAI Solutions builds these solutions for mid-tier engineering, construction, civil, earthworks and mining firms in Western Australia.
What tasks make up most of an engineer’s admin time?
Based on LAI Solutions’ client work in Western Australia, the four main sources of engineering admin overhead are: project reporting (compiling and distributing progress updates), approval workflows (chasing sign-offs and managing outstanding approvals), document management (filing, version control, and locating drawings or specs), and internal coordination (status meetings and office-to-site communication). Together these account for the bulk of the 17 hours per week identified in LAI’s research.
Does LAI Solutions work with small engineering businesses?
No. LAI Solutions works exclusively with mid-tier engineering, construction, civil, earthworks and mining firms. We do not work with small businesses. Our focus is specifically designed for the complexity, project scale, and Microsoft 365 infrastructure of mid-tier firms in Western Australia.