A practical register for engineering, procurement, and construction interfaces — the handover points where one party's deliverable becomes another party's input. Built to answer not just what needs to be tracked, but how to actually do it.
In "A Guide to the Project Management of EPCM Contracts", the Construction Industry Institute (CII) identifies interface management as one of the highest-leverage activities on a project. EPCM organisations split work across many disciplines, contractors, vendors, and owner teams — and each split creates an interface where schedule, scope, and information must cross a boundary.
When those boundaries are tracked informally — in emails, side conversations, or a schedule note nobody opens — they fail silently. By the time the gap is visible on site, recovery is expensive.
Most PM guides — including the CII guide — tell you that you should manage interfaces. Few tell you how: what to write down, who owns the date, what the register should look like at 7am on a Monday.
Closing that "should → how" gap is a core principle behind every IPEXIQ tool. This app is the practical answer for interface tracking.
Every interface is a single record with two sides: a From party providing something, and one or more To parties needing it. Each side carries a forecast date. The variance between them tells you whether the interface is on track.
A practical workflow you can adopt this week — no consultant required.
List every organisation, discipline lead, or vendor that owns at least one interface. Each entry carries a name and email — and becomes a dropdown option everywhere else in the app.
For every handover, record: the From side (who provides), the To side(s) (who needs it), and a one-line description on each. You'll typically end up with 30–150 interfaces on a mid-size EPCM project.
A single forecast date per side keeps the register fast to update. When the deliverable lands, tick "Done". The Summary tab shows variance — green when the To-side date sits after the From-side date (you have float), red when it doesn't.
Open the Summary tab in your weekly project meeting. The compressed view (interface number, title, status, From & To forecast, variance) is built to scan in under a minute per row.
The whole register exports as a portable markdown file. Re-import it on another machine, archive it with the close-out documents, or version-control it alongside your project records.
The CII Guide to the Project Management of EPCM Contracts calls out interface management across several chapters. This app maps to the practical artifacts each one asks for.
CII published two complementary documents on interface management. RS302-1 (the Research Summary) defines what good interface management looks like. IR302-2 (the Implementation Resource / Guide) tells project teams how to put it in place. Here's how they line up — and where this app sits.
Purpose: Define the discipline. Establish vocabulary, the four-phase IM process, and the business case.
Audience: Sponsors, PMs, and corporate process owners deciding whether to invest in IM.
Tone: Conceptual — frameworks, maturity models, benefits.
Output: A common definition of an "interface," roles (IM Lead, Interface Owner), and the IM lifecycle.
Purpose: Operationalise RS302-1. Provide templates, checklists, and step-by-step procedures.
Audience: Project teams and IM coordinators standing up the process on a live project.
Tone: Practical — register layouts, RACI examples, meeting cadences.
Output: A working interface register, agreement templates, and tracking workflows.
Purpose: Take the IR302-2 templates off the spreadsheet and run them as live software your whole team can use.
Audience: Project teams who need a register today — not another Excel workbook to maintain by hand.
Tone: Operational — multi-user, persistent, queryable, exportable.
Output: A shared interface register with party admin, forecast dates, variance flags, and markdown export — accessible from any browser.
RS302-1 and IR302-2 are publications of the Construction Industry Institute (CII). References here are for educational comparison; consult the source documents for full requirements.
Open the app, create your first register, and have your party list and first ten interfaces captured in under thirty minutes.
Launch the Interfaces App