Engineering Dashboard in Google Sheets

The Engineering Dashboard in Google Sheets turns a flat project log into a six-page engineering reporting pack. The sample build carries 500 projects, $6,518,341 of project cost, 36,504 engineer hours and 304 unique clients spread across 8 departments, 9 sectors and 8 work types – and every number recalculates the moment you paste your own rows. It is built on native Google Sheets pivot tables and slicers, so no helper formulas sit behind the charts and the file stays fast as the log grows. From the NextGenTemplates catalogue of 1,400+ spreadsheet templates. One-time payment, lifetime access, no subscription. If the copy link does not open in your Google account, email us and we will fix it or refund you.

Key Features of the Engineering Dashboard in Google Sheets

• Six navigable pages. A tab strip at the top of every page jumps to Overview, Departments, Projects, Delivery, Search and Instructions.
• Four slicers per analysis page. Overview filters on Month, Department, Sector and Status; Departments on Department, Work Type, Month and Priority; Projects on Work Type, Sector, Lead Engineer and Phase; Delivery on Priority, Phase, Billing Model and Month.
• 16 KPI cards across four pages – Total Project Cost $6,518,341, Total Projects 500, Engineer Hours 36,504, Avg Project Cost $13,037, Completed Projects 341, Mechanical Cost $1,239,764, Detailed Design Cost $2,674,511, Critical Priority Cost $769,932 and more.
• 16 charts – column, bar, stacked column, area, line, donut and two-axis combo charts, all reading pivot tables rather than formula blocks.
• A right-hand sidebar on every analysis page with a snapshot block, a 12-month cost sparkline, a Top 5 ranking table, a share-of-cost bar list and an At a Glance summary.
• A Search page that returns the full 16-field record for any Project ID – date, department, sector, work type, client, priority, cost, engineer hours, cycle time, lead engineer, billing model, status, phase, month and quarter.
• Auto-expanding ranges. Pivots, slicers and every formula already cover 1,000 data rows; paste anywhere up to row 1001 and the dashboard follows.
• A three-colour theme – ink #0E2A38, accent #00B39F and amber #F2A03D – edited from one palette block at the top of the script.

What’s Inside the Engineering Dashboard in Google Sheets

Overview – portfolio-wide performance

The landing page reports the whole portfolio across all departments and sectors. Four KPI cards head the page, then Monthly Project Cost Trend (peaking at $743,839 in January) and Project Cost by Sector, where Manufacturing leads at $1,116,414 ahead of Energy at $980,405. Below them sit Project Cost by Priority as a donut (Medium 26.0%, High 21.1%, Urgent 16.9%) and Department Cost vs Projects, a combo chart plotting spend as columns against project count as a line. The sidebar carries a 68.2% completion rate, the Top 5 Departments by Cost and a Project Status Mix showing 13.4% In Progress, 8.4% On Hold and 5.8% Delayed.

Departments – workload and capacity

This page answers where the hours are going. Cost vs Engineer Hours compares the two measures per department, and Cost by Department & Work Type stacks eight work types – Detailed Design, Design Review, Feasibility Study, Field Survey, Prototype Build, Root Cause Analysis, Site Inspection and Testing & QA – inside each department column. Monthly Engineer Hours tracks capacity from 1,842 in February to 3,400 in November, and Projects by Status repeats the completion mix at department level. The snapshot panel exposes the number that matters most to a department head: cost per engineer hour, $178.57.

Projects – work type, sector and lead engineer

Cost by Work Type shows Detailed Design absorbing $2,674,511, or 41.0% of all spend, with Prototype Build second at $1,182,815. Sector Cost vs Projects pairs spend with volume, Cost by Lead Engineer ranks all ten engineers from Farhan Qureshi at $847,467 down to Derek Nakamura at $481,728, and Engineer Hours by Phase splits effort across Concept, Planning, Execution, Delivery and Closeout – Execution alone takes 33.7%.

Delivery – priority, phase and billing

Projects by Priority counts 147 Medium, 102 High and 35 Critical jobs. Phase Cost vs Engineer Hours shows Execution as the heaviest phase at $2,123,501, Cost by Billing Model breaks revenue into Fixed Price 29.1%, Time & Materials 16.4%, Lump Sum and Milestone at 15.4% each, and Monthly Project Volume tracks throughput between 33 and 50 jobs a month. The sidebar reports $21,442 of cost per client and 1.6 projects per client.

Search – single project lookup

Pick a Project ID from the dropdown and the page returns that project’s full record. Useful in a review meeting when someone asks why PRJ-0001 ran two days and $8,262 on a Field Survey for a chemical-sector client.

Instructions – the ten-step user guide

A built-in guide explains where the pivot tables live, how slicers scope to their own page, why the KPI cards deliberately stay unfiltered, how to swap in your data and how to raise the row limit past 1,000.

Engineering Dashboard in Google Sheets vs. Excel vs. Paid Project Portfolio Software – Where This Fits

Who This Template Is For – and Who It’s Not For

A good fit if you run an engineering department, a consulting practice or a design office that bills projects, and you keep the project log in a spreadsheet already. It suits engineering managers reporting monthly to a leadership team, practice leads comparing lead-engineer utilisation, and finance partners who need cost per engineer hour and billing model mix in the same view.

Not a good fit if you need live task-level scheduling, Gantt dependencies or resource levelling – this is a reporting layer, not a planning tool. It is also the wrong choice if your project data lives in an ERP that nobody exports from, if you need more than a few thousand rows without editing the Apps Script row limit, or if you require role-based field permissions. Google Sheets sharing is file-level, not field-level.

How to Use the Engineering Dashboard in Google Sheets

1. Download the PDF in your order and click the Make a Copy link. The dashboard lands in your own Google Drive, fully editable.
2. Open the Instructions page and read the ten steps – two minutes now saves a rebuild later.
3. Go to the Data sheet and replace the 500 sample rows with your own projects. Keep the column headers exactly as they are so pivots, slicers and charts keep working.
4. Return to Overview. The KPI cards, charts, pivots and sidebar rankings will have already updated.
5. Click a slicer to scope the page. Slicers are per-page, so Departments can sit on Mechanical while Overview stays on the whole portfolio. Open a slicer and choose Select all to clear it.
6. Use the Search page to pull any single project record during a review.
7. To rebrand, edit the three hex codes in the palette block at the top of the script and re-run it.

Real-World Use Cases

Priya, engineering manager at a 40-person consultancy. Her monthly pack used to take a day of pivot rebuilding. She now filters the Departments page to Mechanical, screenshots the Cost vs Engineer Hours chart and the $178.57 cost-per-hour figure, and the pack is done before lunch.

Tom, practice lead in a civil and structural group. He uses Cost by Lead Engineer to spot that one engineer is carrying $847,467 of work while another sits at $481,728, then rebalances the next quarter’s assignments before anyone burns out.

Ana, finance partner to an engineering division. She reads Cost by Billing Model and sees Fixed Price at 29.1% of revenue against a 68.2% completion rate, and uses the Delivery page’s phase costs to argue for more milestone-based contracts.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need Google Workspace, or will a free Gmail account work?

A free personal Google account is enough. Click the copy link in the PDF and the dashboard is yours.

How many projects can it hold?

1,000 rows out of the box, with pivots, slicers and formulas already covering that range. For more, open the Apps Script file, raise the DATA_ROWS value and re-run main().

Why do the KPI cards ignore my slicer selection?

By design. The KPI cards and the At a Glance list use SUMIFS and COUNTIFS on the Data sheet so they always show unfiltered portfolio totals. The charts, pivot tables and Top 5 panels are the slicer-aware parts.

Can I add my own departments, sectors or work types?

Yes. Type them into the Data sheet columns and they appear in the slicers, pivots and charts automatically – no list maintenance needed.

Can I change the colours to match our brand?

Yes. The design uses one contrast pair, ink #0E2A38 against accent #00B39F, plus amber #F2A03D for second chart series. Edit the palette at the top of the script.

Does it work on a phone?

It opens in the Google Sheets mobile app and the numbers are readable, but slicers and wide charts are far easier on a laptop or tablet.

Is this a subscription?

No. One payment, lifetime access, and the copy lives in your own Drive.

About the Author

Built by PK – Microsoft Certified Professional with 15+ years of Excel, Google Sheets, and Power BI experience. Founder of NextGenTemplates, reaching 300K+ subscribers across YouTube channels. Every template is hand-built and tested before release.

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Get the Engineering Dashboard in Google Sheets for $9.99 – down from $16.99. Instant download, one-time payment, lifetime access, and a copy that lives in your own Google Drive. Add it to your cart and you will be reporting on your own projects within ten minutes.

Watch the step-by-step video Demo:

Last updated: 14 August 2026.