Detailed Project Insight That Improves Decision-making and Control
Improving job site decision-making is critical to a successful construction project. Giving site managers simple and reliable access to real-time data can make or break your construction project. Quality construction project management software can help facilitate information-sharing, and identify potential issues before they become real problems, reducing risk and increasing overall project profitability.
Here are 5 tips for improving construction project management decision-making.
Assess Your Current Situation
Based on both your business goals and specific construction project objectives, take a look at your past performance and assess where you are today. If you want to increase profitability, for example, take a look at the past projects which have the best overall margins. What patterns and anomalies stand out? Does job location affect your profits? Or is it the type of work that makes a difference? Could it be a particular project manager’s jobs that are dragging down your overall margin?
Assessing your current situation and asking questions can give you a better perspective on where you need to be going forward.
Start Benchmarking
Once you have completed your analysis, establish benchmarks related to your current performance and how you compare to other construction firms. Successful contractors and construction firms establish competitive benchmarks through regular contact with peer groups, like those listed on this page. Others use benchmarking information supplied by organizations such as the Construction Financial Management Association, which provides a Benchmarking Builder CD Tool.
Gain Real-time Access to Information
There is an inflection point in the construction industry that involves cloud technologies and what is referred to as “big data” – the massive amounts of information (text, audio, video, photography) that companies generate each day – that provide the keen insight construction managers need to make critical job site decisions. Cloud technology will help to quickly aggregate and analyze big data across multiple construction-related companies who opt into sharing information such as wage and materials pricing or productivity metrics.
Establish Key Performance Indicators
Based on your business goals and benchmarks, define key performance indicators (KPIs), such as RFI cycle time, and the time frame you should look at each metric. How often you track a KPI depends on how often the data changes and how quickly you can make course corrections.
Being diligent about your KPIs, and analyzing how your performing over time, can improve decision-making on the job site.
Put Processes in Place
Once you’ve identified what you want to monitor, make sure your processes can deliver your data. For example, if you don’t currently update your estimates with change orders, you can add that to your workflow to get a truer picture of your estimate-to-actual cost variance. This will improve your job profitability over time.
Discover how Sage Construction software can help improve job site decision making.
Video Case Study
Thor Construction Inc was born from a dream out of the back of an old pick-up truck. Today, the company works on some of the largest jobs in North America — including many high profile Las Vegas hotels and resorts — with year-over growth of 30-60%.
See how Sage 300 Construction & Real Estate enables their rapid expansion with fully integrated Accounting, Project Management, Job Costing, and Payroll modules.
