Projects: Build On-Site

Building projects onsite presents the same unique challenges no matter what industry you are in, and that determines what you need in a business system.

What challenges do you face?

If your company's projects encompass building or infrastructure construction that takes place on location for a client, your challenges are different than producing a product in-house or providing standalone professional services. Onsite projects typically include commercial or industrial buildings such as office buildings or manufacturing plants, and heavy/civil engineering construction such as bridges, railways and utilities.

Whether you are a general or specialty contractor servicing the construction of a skyscraper, power plant, refinery, dam or offshore drilling platform, you are managing a project business with specific needs.

Typically, managing the resources, materials, subcontractors and cash across a portfolio of many different projects is handled in company divisions that remain fundamentally separated in process and systems. The operational and financial side of the business are disconnected, leaving managers across the company misaligned and executives unaware of their company’s current situation.


Unify Your Project Business with Project Business Automation

Project Business Automation is a comprehensive end-to-end business system for project-driven organizations that build onsite. PBA synthesizes all project functions inside the ERP. You gain access to real-time information so you can effectively manage and control your client engagements with all the related processes to deliver projects on time and on budget. This means you can operate more efficiently, make timely and informed business decisions, reduce risks and become more profitable.

Budget Management

Being a build onsite project-driven organization means you must manage and integrate your project budget across many disciplines. You draw estimates from multiple sources including operations, subcontractors, RFQs, procurement, fees, insurance, permits, inventory and labor rates. Plus, you must plan for the unexpected with accurate management/contingency reserves. Often, there is a need to manage unit budgets as well, specifying deliverables in terms of pieces, yards/meters/feet, installs, etc.

Then you must time-phase your estimates for cash flow projections and Earned Value reporting. However, contract variations mean budgets are constantly amended as wok and deliverables are added or removed from the original scope of work.

Budgeting in ADEACA ONE Project Business Automation

Multilevel Cost Breakdown Structure allows you to manage budgets at the right level of detail for each engagement to ensure effective job costing.

  • Assume labor estimates directly from the schedule
  • Transfer vendor confirmed prices from RFQs
  • Incorporate contingencies for unexpected costs
  • Always based on current rates
  • Time-phased budgets for cash flow projections and Earned Value Analysis

Continuous Estimate at Completion Assessment

When engagements span months rather than days or weeks, periodic assessments of progress, budget burn-rate, contingency drawdown and Estimate at Completion (EAC) become a critical process in predicting the future success or failure of the project. You must continually track completed work and milestones operationally and match that to your financial plan. Beyond that, progress tracking may also include different degrees of completion and in different measurements, such as units installed.

EAC in ADEACA ONE Project Business Automation

ADEACA ONE PBA couples actual costs and commitments with quantitative progress indicators, enabling controllers to deduce critical performance metrics, such as productivity indicators, completion degrees, budget variances and margin at completion.

  • Based on real-time data tracked against a multilevel cost breakdown structure means variances are instantly identified
  • Automatic synchronization of commitments and actuals from procurement and subcontracts
  • Apply remaining work estimates from the schedule to automatically compute estimate at completion for labor
  • Apply costing metrics directly to revenue recognition and earned value analytics
  • Ensure a smooth P&L by accruing revenue based on real progress

Reduce Mitigation Costs

Too often, onsite projects continue unchecked until things go significantly wrong. When projects go wrong it leads to delays, contractual penalties, overruns and significant mitigation costs when equipment, labor and materials are reallocated between engagements or procured externally at inflated costs. Viewed retrospectively, the warning signs were evident but were not uncovered in a timely manner, allowing minor issues to fester and worsen until they become major problems.

Early Detection with ADEACA ONE Project Business Automation

ADEACA ONE PBA provides real-time visibility across your project portfolio so you instantly know when things go awry and have time to take corrective action.

  • Proprietary sensor points automatically monitor project operations and financials, flagging deviations and trends
  • Holistic company and project key performance indicators
  • Comprehensive risk & issue management

Project Planning is Paramount

For onsite projects, an accurate project plan is paramount to ensure the appropriate availability of labor, equipment and materials. For onsite project companies, the logistics of moving labor and heavy equipment between project sites further emphasizes the need for a realistic plan.

The more accurate the plan is, the more precise the budget is and the greater the ability you have to deal with schedule disruptions. These disruptions include internal causes, such as unavailable labor or equipment, or external causes such as general contractor revisions, subcontractor delays, weather, unforeseen site conditions, and material supply chain interruptions.

ADEACA ONE Project Business Automation Centralizes the Project Plan

With ADEACA ONE PBA all critical elements to your projects are centralized allowing the project plan to draw from these elements in real-time so it remains dynamically updated at all times. This architecture ensures alignment not only across individual projects but across entire portfolios.

  • Central capacity pool manages equipment and labor utilization to identify bottlenecks across portfolios of projects
  • Supply chain disruptions are automatically detected and reported as material constraints in the project plan
  • Automatically realign the procurement schedule when the project schedule changes
  • Validate availability of equipment and labor
  • Validate compliance with project deadlines

Subcontractor Management

For one or many projects, you may rely on subcontractors to get the job done. Poorly managed subcontractors may lead to disputes, incidents, delays and claims. Not only do you need to ensure subcontractors do the required work in the allotted time, but you must also verify they have the required certificates and insurance while complying with general project safety requirements.

Additionally, you need to manage contract variations with the subcontractor and ensure payments are in accordance with the contract. Subsequently, these variations may need to be passed along to the client when appropriate.

Superior Subcontract Management with ADEACA ONE Project Business Automation

ADEACA ONE PBA helps you manage all the variables that go into subcontracting. Ensure that your subcontractors remain compliant and maintain a clear understanding of costs and payments.

  • Robust submittal tracking and change management
  • Payment blocks for non-compliant subcontractors
  • Progress based payment requests validated against approved contract components
  • Real-time updates of commitments and costs

Integrate your capabilities

Everything for your construction business on one platform

Operational project management

  • Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) management
  • Project scheduling
  • Resource management
  • Risk and issue management
  • Project (demand) driven MRP
  • Material constraint management
  • Subcontract management
  • Sensor point status (early detection)

Financial project management

  • Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS) management
  • Project costing
  • Budget management
  • Contract variations and change management
  • EAC and variance projections
  • Month-end process
  • Project performance analytics

ERP

  • GL, AR, AP and fixed assets
  • Human Capital Management
  • Inventory and shop floor management
  • Procurement & Sourcing
  • Sales & Marketing
  • Material Requirement Planning (MRP)
  • Project accounting
  • Service management

CRM

  • Sales process management
  • Lead tracking
  • Opportunity management
  • Account and contact management
  • Social media tracking
  • LinkedIn sales navigator integration
  • Outlook integration
  • Mobile access
  • Dashboards and analytics

Learn more about ADEACA Project Business Automation™ 

Construction and engineering companies trust ADEACA to deliver a unified solution

Our clients are leaders and visionaries. Learn more as they share their stories.

APi Group, a specialty contractor construction firm, uses ADEACA to standardize business processes across its portfolio of subsidiaries, providing real-time insights to executives to help make better, more timely decisions.

Find answers to your questions

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PBA Quick Guide

This Quick Guide to Project Business Automation gives you a high-level overview of PBA and how it can be applied to your project-driven business.

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