Microsoft Office is all you have to know - Excel Word PowerPoint and Outlook. That it. Perhaps also Microsoft Project if you are on small project and have to do everything yourself. Microsoft may not know how crucial they are to construction projects. Outlook needs no detail as email is a must. Excel will be the most useful as it is the most versatile and it is used by most disciplines in your project team to track various items and update each other as required. Simplicity is key. No fancy software. It is also usually known by your site engineers and cheap to install. Easy Communication with the site team is Number 1. Examples; Document control - can use excel (if no special electronic document management software is used) to track iing outgoing transmittals. Technical team will track transmittals drawing production drawing production orders etc on excel to update construction site team. The exception in this team is that they will also use AutoCAD which technicians will use to prepare various drawings. Again excel can be ed to AutoCAD if required. QA - method statements will be on Word. Tracking of inspection requests etc will be on excel so can be transmitted easily tomercial team to calculate interim payment applications. HSE - tracking of site head count carried out etc are all done on Excel. Lifting team - tracking of lifting Plant and equipment and tracking of 3rd party testing dates etc all done on Excel. Plant department - tracking of Plant dates of Plant of Plant etc is mostly done using excel. Procurement - again the easiest way to track andmunicate is via excel to track all procurement requests and deliveries. Storemen can all use excel. More senior persons can enter goods delivered onto more advanced software for costing etc. Commercial team - quantity surveyors all work on excel for quantity take offs. Accountants use excel a lot to receive updates from stores etc etc. Bill of Quantities from clients is mostly on Excel for pricing of projects. Surveyors - they all know excel as most survey equipment can import data using excel - again because it is broadly known. Administration - tracking on large sites eventually ends up on excel for easy updating to accounts team for salary processing etc. When you have several thousand on site this is crucial. Timekeeping for Plant and machinery is also tracked largely by excel spreadsheets. Planning team are an exception as they will mostly use Primavera to make construction schedules so they will distribute these via PDF or export small sections on excel or Microsoft Project. Site Engineers use excel a lot to program their 1 week or 4 week look aheads in detail manpower allocation etc. As Project Manager it is also worth knowing Microsoft PowerPoint as you often have to make presentations to the client clients and to internal senior managemt for monthly progress reports etc. Hopefully this gives you some insight into what is most useful to learn.