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You find out the project lost money at handover

Contracting fails on the same seam every time. The BOQ is priced once, the site spends daily, and nobody reconciles the two until the project is finished. We close that gap while the project is still running.

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What the day actually looks like

  • The site store is a container. Cement and rebar arrive, the driver leaves, and the delivery note is found in a pocket three days later.

  • The consultant approves a variation verbally at the Tuesday site walk. The instruction reaches the office as a WhatsApp voice note.

  • Progress billing is prepared from the QS spreadsheet, then argued down by the consultant line by line before certification.

  • Subcontractors submit certificates against work you cannot verify without sending someone to count blockwork on the fourth floor.

  • Retention sits at five per cent across a dozen closed projects, and nobody has a list of what is still recoverable.

Where it usually breaks

  1. BOQ and actual never meet

    The estimate lives in the tendering spreadsheet, the spend lives in the accounts, and the two use different item codes. So cost overrun is discovered at final account, when the only remaining option is to argue about it. Nobody can tell you today which BOQ lines are already over.

  2. Variations approved by conversation

    The instruction is given on site, the work is done, and the paperwork is raised weeks later — or never. When the consultant disputes it, you have no dated instruction, no priced quote, no signature. The variation becomes a cost you absorb and call a lesson.

  3. Site stores with no receipt

    Material is issued from the yard to the site and disappears from the record. The storekeeper will not stop a truck to write a transfer note. So the stock figure is a guess, consumption per project is unknown, and shortage on the last pour is discovered on the morning of the pour.

  4. WIP nobody can value

    Mid-project, finance needs work in progress. The QS has a percentage, the site has a photograph, procurement has invoices not yet certified. The three figures are combined by judgement, and that judgement is what the interim accounts rest on for the whole year.

  5. Retention and certificates drift

    Subcontractor certificates are approved against measured work in one file and paid from another. Retention is deducted correctly and then forgotten. Two years after practical completion, releasing it requires reconstructing the history from bank statements and memory.

How the work runs

  1. One coded cost structure

    We build a single work breakdown that the estimator, the QS, procurement and finance all post against. The BOQ line that was priced is the line the purchase order hits and the line the cost report reads. No mapping spreadsheet in between.

  2. Variation control with a clock

    Every instruction gets a numbered record on the day it is given, with the person who gave it, the affected BOQ lines and a price. Unpriced variations age visibly on a list somebody owns. The site can raise one from a phone before leaving the floor.

  3. Make the site receipt possible

    We design the goods movement around what a storekeeper will actually do at the gate: scan, quantity, project, done. Three fields, not fourteen. Anything else is derived. Issue to trade and return of surplus follow the same rule.

  4. Progress and certification in one flow

    Measured progress, application, certified amount and the difference between them live on the same record. Subcontractor back-to-back certificates hang off the main certificate, so under-certification is visible against what you have already paid down the chain.

  5. Retention as a tracked balance

    Retention is held as its own balance per contract with a release date, not a note in the ledger. Defect liability periods run on the same calendar, and the release becomes a task that appears rather than a claim someone remembers.

What changes once it holds

  • Cost overrun on a BOQ line is visible in the week it happens.
  • Every variation carries a date, an instructor and a price.
  • Material issued to site is charged to the project that consumed it.
  • WIP is calculated from records, not assembled by judgement.
  • Subcontractor certificates reconcile to the main certificate.
  • Retention has a balance and a release date you can see.

The margin is lost before anyone sees it

A contracting business does not usually lose money in one dramatic event. It loses it in fifty small ones: a variation done for goodwill, a load of blocks issued to the wrong project, a subcontractor certified for work that was later redone. Each is small enough to absorb and invisible until the accounts close. The purpose of a system here is not reporting. It is making each of those fifty events cost something visible on the day it happens, to somebody with the authority to stop it. That requires the site to be part of the record rather than a source of paperwork the office types up afterwards.

Why site data is the whole implementation

Every contracting ERP that fails, fails on site. The office configures beautifully, and then the storekeeper is asked to enter a cost centre, a project phase, an activity code and a unit of measure before he can accept a delivery in the sun. He will not, and he is not wrong. We design the site interaction first and let the office complexity be derived from it. If a field cannot be captured at the gate in under twenty seconds, it must be inferred from the purchase order or defaulted from the project. The office can be asked for discipline. The site can only be asked for the minimum.

What we do about disputes you will have anyway

You will have disputes with consultants and with subcontractors. The question is what you can produce when one starts. A dated instruction record, a priced variation, a measured progress claim and a photograph attached at the time are worth more than any argument made later from a reconstructed file. We build the trail as a by-product of doing the work rather than as an extra task, because a trail that costs extra effort is a trail that stops the moment the site gets busy — which is exactly when the disputed instruction is given.

Questions we get asked

Can this work if we are already mid-project?
Yes, and it usually is. We take the BOQ and committed costs as an opening position rather than trying to rebuild history. The first month runs alongside your existing reporting so you can see where the two disagree, which is itself the most useful output. Retrospective correction is limited to open commitments and unreleased retention, not every transaction since mobilisation.
Our site staff will not use a system. What then?
We assume that until proven otherwise. The design target is that a storekeeper completes a receipt in three taps on a phone, offline if the site has no signal, and that nobody on site is ever asked for an accounting code. If a step cannot survive a hot afternoon and a waiting truck, it does not belong on site. The complexity lives in the office, where there are chairs.
Do we need a separate QS system as well?
Usually not. Measurement and valuation can sit against the same work breakdown as procurement and cost, which is what removes the reconciliation. Where a specialist measurement tool is genuinely better for your discipline, we say so and integrate it rather than replacing it. Our commercial interest never decides that answer, and we put the reasoning in the diagnosis.
How do you handle joint ventures and multiple companies?
Contract by contract. A joint venture is set up with its own books, its own certificates and a defined share of cost, so partner reporting comes out of the system rather than a spreadsheet at quarter end. Inter-company plant hire and staff charges are posted as real transactions with rates agreed in advance, because that is where partner disputes normally begin.
What if the diagnosis says our current system is fine?
Then we write that. It happens more often than you would expect, because the failure is usually process and ownership rather than software. In that case the report names who must own each number, which controls are missing and what to fix in what order. You are free to do that work internally. We are paid for the diagnosis, not for a conclusion that suits us.

What this industry usually needs

Tell us what is not working

Send one line about what is going wrong. On the first call we will tell you whether it is a system problem, a process problem or a governance problem — and which one to fix first. That call is free and it is not a sales meeting.

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