In this article I’m going to go through the basics of how, after creating a change order in 4castplus, you can go on to make any revisions to purchase orders based on the details of that change order. First, however, I’ll clarify a bit of terminology in terms of the difference between a change order and PO revision:
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12,
2018
Your Corporate Data is a Gold Mine - Take it Seriously
For any organization, their corporate data is one of the most important assets they possess. The information they gather on a daily basis forms the core of who they are, where they’ve been and where they’re going. The monumental technology changes going on in the world today have made ‘Data’ the central element that determines success or failure for most any company.
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22,
2018
Get it Right the First Time
On any day of any major construction project, a ton of information is being collected about that project. Including: costs, hours, activities and progress; along with a variety of documents, photos, invoices and receipts. Feeding all this data to the project managers is critical to enable them to bring the project to a successful completion on time and on budget.
The thing is, all this data that’s collected needs to be both accurate and complete, otherwise it’s not much use to anyone. Not only that, but it also has to be timely – meaning that, giving project managers data that several weeks old doesn’t really help much. It needs to be current, like from today, otherwise you’re managing the past, which is not only ineffective, but frustrating.
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16,
2018
4castplus in Action: Multiple Divisions Under One Roof
A few months ago, the team at SECURE Energy Services approached us at 4castplus with a situational challenge that they needed to have resolved. The problem they were experiencing, was that the multiple business divisions using 4castplus as their core operational solution, were deployed into separate 4castplus accounts. While each division was happy with the software and its value to their business unit, this approach introduced some corporate-level challenges.
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15,
2018
Contractor Profits at the Mercy of Higher Construction Costs
Construction costs in the US have been escalating for months now, and it’s so far the contractors who are carrying the weight of absorbing these price increases. This, according to a recent study by the Associated General Contractors, who went on to point out that recent tariffs on non-US foreign materials have further intensified the issue.
The Pain of Higher Construction Costs
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23,
2018
Top 5 Tips: How to Help Lean Teams to do the Work of Many
Everyone wants to run a ‘Lean’ operation. But how do you do that when there’s so much work to do, projects to stay on top of, reports to run, etc.? The behavioral challenge most organizations suffer from when it comes to running lean, is what I call the “More means More” syndrome. Put simply, this means: as you grow and get more work, you just add more people to do that work. More work, therefore more people, right? Well, hang on a second.
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31,
2018
Should I Re-Baseline or Create a Change Order?
We often get asked about the distinction between re-baselining a project and creating a change order. I can see why there’s a bit of confusion there because in many respects they accomplish a similar outcome. However, they are fundamentally different processes that serve unique purposes.
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20,
2018
Spreadsheets for Cost Management are a Lot of Work for Little Return
"Excel just wasn’t designed to do some of the heavy lifting that companies need to do in finance.” So says Paul Hammerman, a business applications analyst at Forrester Research Inc. Despite that generally accepted fact, spreadsheets continue to be widely used as the default tool of choice for managing the finances of construction projects large and small. Most individuals that find themselves in this situation however, would enthusiastically agree that the use of spreadsheets for this level of complexity requires a ridiculous amount of meaningless effort for very little return. Far too much effort is put into getting the data into the spreadsheet – and all the formulas straightened out – that little time is actually spent analyzing that data.
03
3,
2018
Time-Phasing the Remaining Budget: What Does it Mean?
Time-phasing the project budget is as core to project controls on construction projects as pasta is to Italian food. Or hockey is to a Canadian winter. Time-phasing is so central to project controls, that in 4castplus there are five different time-phasing plans that can be setup on a single project. Actually, there are 10 – but in this article we’re mostly going to talk about one really important one.
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18,
2018
