Most large companies have established procedures when it comes to organizing and constructing meetings during a project, and also when updating and distributing meeting minutes. Although this may seem like an administrative task, the running of the meeting and taking proper notes and updating the meeting minutes is usually not the job of the project administrator but the project engineer or even project manager. Smaller companies however, may not have established procedures in place. The post below therefore can serve as a guide for a project engineer at a smaller company when writing and updating meeting minutes.

First of all, we must give numbers to each meeting. Also, it is good practice to keep the last two meetings notes on the same issue, below the meeting’s notes we are considering.And each item is numbered as a separate item. When they are introduced, they take the new number in sequence. When they are resolved, they appear as resolved in the next week, and only then they disappear.

So lets say for meeting no.5, you have a new open item, say, item no.15. And in following weeks, in meetings 6 and then 7 there are additional notes to it but it is still not resolved….  And lets assume that during meeting 8, someone says that it is resolved and people agree. So, it started in meeting 5, continued to be updated during meetings 6 and 7, and resolved in meeting 8.

Here is how you do it:

For meeting 5, you write it under NEW ITEMS section.

NEW ITEMS:

5-15 ……….(item title)……………………

this is the status of item when discussed during meeting no.5

Starting from meeting 6, it is written under past (or previous) items section as follows (remember that meeting 6 will still have its own NEW ITEMS section, where you will list new issues as 6-1, 6-2 etc..).

PREVIOUS ITEMS:

5-15- …………..(item title)………..

this is the status of item when discussed during meeting no.5

additional notes and updates

And here is what you write for this item in meeting no. 7 notes

5-15 ………………..(item title)………………

(5) this is the status of item when discussed during meeting no.5

(6) additional notes and updates which were discussed during meeting no.6

(7) additional notes and updates again which were discussed in meeting no.7

Here is what you write for this item in meeting #8 notes, when it is resolved

5-15- ………….(item title)………………

(write same items for meetings 5, 6, 7)

(8) Resolved

And starting from meeting number 9, this item 5-15 should not be displayed anymore.

There can be different practices, and this is one of them but one of the most effective in accurately and clearly tracking what is going on during meetings. Some people can do it such as they only write the past three meetings and do not display anything before, even if an item might be going on for many meetings. This may save paper but it causes to not see at first glance how the issue had started, during the meeting.