The 40.23 upgrade made a hell of a difference with my current fort. With designation prioritization, the plumbing to my grand dining hall is completed, cleaned of stones, smoothed, and the pools engraved (floors and walls) moments before the pipeline was breached to flood them. So far, no overflow. The pressure-readjustment worked, and now the wells in the hall can be put to use.
In the meantime, since the hall has been carved out (after the breach), I kept my miners busy whittling away at the Elite Housing section before working on middle-class sections. Good thing we're on that now, because we now have double the amount of dwarves we had earlier, and we're surprisingly out of housing space already. Once the Elite Quarters are carved out, my engravers are going to smooth and engrave them (after they finish up the grand dining hall), and my Legendary Dwarves will take up house in them. More useful dwarves get the larger and better suites (not stone, but quick to cut out, and still not bad, since I have legendary masons and carpenters working on the next batch of furniture). I'll be working on the Royal Suites in due time; but I do need to make a better barracks, since my current one is rather lax for what it's worth. Makes a better staging area, if anything.
With all the excess stone, and craploads, while at it, I guess I can make tons of blocks, and work on an aboveground project, or at least, wall-in my fortress a bit better, since it's getting a bit too lavish, and appealing for outsiders to poke their noses in. If anything, at least setup a trap gauntlet and a protected wagon-way for merchants. I guess I can work on dwarven condos and a perimeter wall as well. I'm not sure what else is left to do on my checklist before I dig a bit deeper and such.