“How are we doing on this job?”
Answering that question can be the key to making smart adjustments to construction projects in real time.
The short videos below show how to use ProNovos to get to the root causes of project trends in real time. They were taken from our January 19 webinar “Modernizing the Job Review Process.”
During the half-hour event, veteran construction CPA Jason Bainter of Somerset CPAs & Advisors joined ProNovos Solutions Engineer Kevin Bright to cover data-driven approaches to streamlining the work-in-process (WIP) report; conducting a cost-to-complete analysis; analyzing project billings, and more.
ProNovos integrates with widely used construction apps like Foundation Accounting Software to deliver project and company insights. Last year, we joined forces with Somerset and seven other CPA firms to educate contractors nationwide about modernized approaches to construction analytics, project management and financial workflows.
In the first video Bainter explains some of the key performance indicators (KPIs) that PMs and other construction stakeholders should focus on when reviewing the job, especially projected profit margin.
In the second snippet Bright highlights multiple approaches to getting at projected final cost by making real-time adjustments to inputs related to labor, materials and production rates.
In “Tips on Modern WIP Analysis,” Bainter provides his perspective on how contractors reviewing project performance should be thinking about over- and under-billings.
“Under-billings could be an identification that there’s a loss on the job, so we dig into those that are significant or material to the financial statements to find out just what’s causing them,” the CPA told the audience. “Most of the time, it’s going to be an issue of timing. For example, maybe the contract says you can only bill every 15th of the month. So if you put a lot of costs into the last 15 days of the month, you’re not going to be billed to progress until the next month.”
In other instances, though, “the contractor has not properly identified the source of those cost overruns, so there is a real loss on the job,” Bainter said. “Those are the types of questions and jobs that we really want to look at.”
How to drill into those questions and jobs?
In the final video—“Getting a Handle on Billings with the Project Billings Dashboard”—Bright focuses on this high-utility ProNovos tool, which offers multiple pathways to insight.
Ultimately, project reviews aren’t just about changing course in real time. They’re a way to identify smart, effective approaches that can be applied to other projects.
And by using data-driven project reviews to figure out where you fell short today, you can do better tomorrow.
“Data is knowledge,” Bainter says in the conclusion to the event. “The more data you have, the better you can explain your jobs, whether they had good or poor performance.”
