Cost overruns are every project manager’s worst nightmare. When it comes to construction projects, exceeding your budget erodes your client’s trust and your company’s profitability.

While forces beyond your control can cause budgets to skyrocket, in most cases, cost overruns are a result of inaccurate estimates, poor budget management and lack of visibility into project costs.

There are always a lot of moving parts in construction projects. This makes them extremely challenging to manage and keep track of and the cost of errors is high.

An excellent way to lessen your chances of having things fall through the cracks is by using sophisticated construction Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software.

ERP software is a solution that gives you a range of integrated solutions to support every aspect of your construction business, including planning, revenue estimates, and project control. This software can help you manage and monitor your projects and significantly reduce your administrative tasks and expenses.

Budget Visibility

One of the biggest causes of cost overruns is also one of the easiest to avoid: no budget transparency. By constantly tracking the progress of various tasks, labour, materials and more, you will have visibility of how the budget is tracking. You will also be able to see early signals of budget overruns, which will give you the chance to fix issues before they get out of control.

Many construction teams use multiple software systems, alongside spreadsheets and other manual options, to manage different aspects of their work. This results in complicated workflows unnecessary manual work, errors, delays and rework. Disconnected systems mean automation is almost impossible, as well as getting an overarching view without time-consuming manual data consolidation.  

ERP software can help you track your budget and manage expenses in real-time, including those of the people working on the project. Construction ERP software keeps your project accounting on track with project time and expense management features.

Additionally, the key to delivering projects on time and budget ultimately comes down to initial estimates and accurate forecasting of project costs. While expert and experienced team members can help guide this process, without real-time accurate data, inaccurate budget forecasting is inevitable. 

Cloud-based construction management software delivers a state-of-the-art solution for construction companies. Built-in benchmarks and detailed job cost information helps to accurately estimate future jobs and forecast project costs. Consequently, project quoting becomes more accurate with detailed insights collected from past projects fed through into estimates.    

Collaboration and Communication

A lack of collaboration and communication between teams is often another cause for cost overruns. If there isn’t a clear line of communication between stakeholders and project managers, delays are inevitable. Delays lead to cost overruns and there’s too great of a risk that work will start on the wrong task at the wrong time. This wasted time threatens to send the whole project off track.

A cloud management platform for construction solves these issues by improving information sharing and communication between on-site and off-site teams. Facilitating collaboration allows teams to work together to resolve issues using real-time accurate data. 

Ready to take your construction business to the next level and prevent cost overruns in the future?

Learn more about MYOB Advanced Construction cloud ERP software or watch an introduction demo to the powerful solution here.