If you’re like most companies that run construction projects, you know that getting accurate and real-time cost data from the jobsite can present many challenges. If you’ve never considered a software system to take on the heavy lifting of that process, here are the top 9 signs you need construction cost tracking software.

Top 9 signs you need construction cost tracking software and how 4castplus can help:

#1.  You have way too many spreadsheets 

Your Site Foremen probably use one or more spreadsheets to capture the daily hours and activities of your crews and equipment for each of your jobsites. You may also have a few contractors working for you that submit their spreadsheet to your site personnel for approval. Then there are the expenses, documents, scanned receipts, safety and inspection reports, etc. that you need to include into the mix, and if you’re a contractor yourself, everything needs to be combined and organized for your client’s Site Superintendent to sign and stamp.

If you are hiring subcontractors to work on your projects, you likely want to keep track of how they are performing for you.  Being able to objectively measure subcontractor performance is critical for project managers, so that they can make key decisions to keep their projects running smoothly. However, subcontractor performance management is difficult if you don’t have the right tools in place to measure productivity.

Before I get started on the details, I’ll give you a quick definition: A CPI Forecast allows project controls professionals to predict the performance of their project using a subjective CPI value rather than the calculated CPI that’s determined based on past performance.

Project controls professionals can spend endless hours discussing, debating and tweaking the required codes for their project and for good reason; there are so many layers to consider in designing the ‘right’ cost coding system.  

Find the Right Cost Coding System for You

Predicting the future is what we’re all about. But when do you use ETC versus FTC – and what’s the difference?

With the hundreds of people entering data into the system every day, what are the chances that a day will ever go by when all the data is entered perfectly – without a single mistake?

Tracking Daily Costs from the Jobsite is challenging enough when you're tracking your own people. What about when you have to track your Vendor LEM costs as well?

Getting all the daily cost data together from multiple sources can be a time-consuming and error-prone undertaking if you don't have a software solution to automate the process. 4castplus eLEM solutions for Vendor Tracking simplifies and streamlines the gathering and processing of daily jobsite costs. Check out the brief presentation below to get a glimpse of the new Vendor LEM Tracking and Portal.

Many EV professionals would argue that Planned Value is one of the most important metrics in earned value analysis.  It provides the critical benchmark from which numerous other metrics are being compared.  

The project spend will follow an uneven pattern – loosely following the schedule of activities and purchases that occur over the project’s duration. Planning the budget over the project’s timeline is called Time-Phased Budgeting. Planned Value is the value of scheduled project spend at a point in time of a project's duration.
Planned value is also referred to as Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS).

On any major project there will be strong ties between Project Controls and Procurement to ensure there is sufficient budget to cover the requisitioned and committed costs issued onto purchase orders. The importance of this relationship can't be understated!

Keeping a project on plan requires careful monitoring to make certain that the project's expenses are kept within budget. 4castplus provides the intrinsic links between procurement and project controls to enable a close bond between these two groups. This connection is described briefly in the explainer presentation below. If you have any thoughts on this, please feel free to leave a comment below and let us know what you think.

One of the greatest challenges construction contractors face, is billing their client for work that happened at the Jobsite.

With all the layers of data capture, approval, routing, costing, etc. that need to be taken care of for the billable data to make it to accounts receivable for invoicing; it's common for things to be missed, delayed or for errors to occur.