This blog is part of a series you will find out that companies with high levels of performance visibility are well placed to deliver successful construction project.

Visibility of Performance

Nine out of ten managers (90%) in the UK and Irish construction firms believe their businesses have visibility of performance, but:

• 32% rated visibility of that performance as “very high”.
• 22% rated visibility as moderate or worse.

The value gap may be caused by the fact that almost two-thirds (64%) of UK and Ireland managers are still using outdated manual tools, like spreadsheets, to measure performance. 34% using such tools are often met with:

• incomplete,
• inaccurate, and
• duplicated insights.

The firms which had no visibility of performance globally wanted tools to help them achieve it and thus: - boost overall efficiency and productivity; - save money: - 47% to improve profit margins - 40% said it is their top priority.

49% of respondents said they use construction-specific platforms, like Procore, and 45% construction-specific point solutions.

40% of businesses, predominantly larger firms, with over 1,000 employees, were deploying business intelligence presentation tools such as PowerBI, Tableau and SPSS.

Business Reporting

As shown above, Business reporting is not used properly by construction firms, preventing them to make compelling, savvy business decisions.

5 tips to improve the way you can make sound business decisions.

We call them RAMPS :

Reporting

Job Cost & Project Reports help you:

• to find out on which jobs you are making a profit or a loss.
• to see where you can make adjustments to keep your projects on track.
• to determine which projects are profitable and on time versus those that are making a loss and will overrun.

Field Reports are great:

• to document daily jobs’ activity onsite
• to identify discrepancies, early in the process, between the digital model and the built asset avoiding costly reworks and improving productivity;
• to identify trends or issues that need to be rectified to avoid costly errors and save you money;
• to mitigate risks avoiding costly claims and improving cash flow.

Financial Statements focus your attention on:

• determining your financial strength;
• evaluating your profitability;
• forecasting the future;
• appraising your strategies.

Analysing– gathering data —

Data produced on a cloud construction platform or a cloud management and project management platform can be easily sorted and analysed to make intelligent business decisions.

Studies show that the construction industry represents one of the last major industries to embrace business intelligence practices, the companies that have done so have gained significant benefits:

• identifying where project efficiencies and productivity gains can be achieved;
• accurately forecast future projects;
• pinpointing recurrent problems on projects and finding a solution to solve them;
• including, in their planning process, industry trends like building patterns, economic conditions and material costs;
• optimising the labour force and workflows to maximize overhead costs;
• predicting material ordering needs, ensuring that the right materials are always on hand when needed;
• streamlining project planning by having material orders built into your workflows.

Monitoring – technology and dashboards.

Project monitoring is the process of protecting your client’s concerns from the risks in a development that they do not directly control.

• What to Monitor:

  • liquidity;
  • work backlog;
  • labour productivity;
  • schedule variance;
  • budget variance;
  • change requests;
  • project cash flow; and
  • cost from suppliers and subcontractors.

Technology allows you to facilitate information transparency, support timely measurements against KPIs, and access data at any time through integrated software and automated processes like:

• costing and estimating,
• equipment management
• project management, etc.

Dashboards provide:

• graphical visualizations of your metrics and KPIs
• one place for the measurement and monitoring of your KPIs.

Predicting – Accurately forecasting at:

Business Level:

• forecasts help to develop budgets and create benchmarks to measure and reward performance.

• forecasts include:

  • backlog;
  • new contract awards;
  • revenue;
  • direct and indirect costs;
  • cash flow;
  • gross margin; and
  • profits before taxes.

Project Level:

• forecasts help to identify potential problem areas including:
  • net profit;
  • cash flow;
  • cost to complete; and
  • labour & equipment resources.

External Factors:

forecast help understanding the factors impacting construction projects:

• political – changes in regulations, taxes or government spending;
• economic – strength and weaknesses of the financial markets;
• social – changes in population demographics.
• technological – industry impact through technology innovations; and
• environmental – circular economy movement.
  

Set up in Motion – Data accessibility anywhere, anytime.

The 4 Cs supported by mobile solutions:

• convenience – enables field workers to access key information in real-time to keep projects moving;
• communication – improves Jobsite productivity through sharing of information online to all members of a project team;
• collaboration – connects key individuals to expedite vital business decisions.

• cloud computing allow access to meaningful information to field personnel to:

  • accelerate pivotal decision making at the job site,
  • empower project leaders to complete tasks (collecting and approving labour time remotely), and
  • directly share information with a home office.

In conclusion

With construction-specific accounting and operations solutions, construction firms gain complete visibility into their projects, knowing where you are; where you have been; and where you need to go…

Implementing BIM can be daunting, but Driving Vision is here to help you at the pace you are comfortable with. Get started by getting in touch now