Integrated Construction Contracting

Before

A contractor runs several agreements at once: the client, the subcontractor, material purchases, and the certificate. If each lives in its own spreadsheet, cost drift appears when the next certificate is already ready to sign. Then someone either explains the number or the payment slips.

Material purchases are often not tied to a project. The cement invoice is in the company's name, and someone is supposed to remember which site the load went to. The site engineer sends percent complete on Friday, the finance office builds the certificate on Thursday night from three files, and those files do not have to describe the same work. The client receives a copy that is not the internal copy.

What was built

The system places the contract, the remaining commitment, material purchases, physical progress, and the certificate inside one project. Each work item has both a percent complete and a committed amount. The remainder sits next to progress. If drift passes the threshold the company set, the warning arrives before anyone signs the certificate.

A material invoice cannot be posted without a contract. A receipt that landed on another site cannot sit on this certificate. The client's copy and the internal copy come from one calculation. The subcontractor's own certificate lives on the same project, so a payment is not made twice.

A working day

The engineer updates the structure item from the site and, when it matters, attaches the photo or the minute to that item. Procurement posts the rebar invoice the same day to that contract and that item. The project manager opens the draft certificate and, before signing, sees three things: percent complete, remaining commitment, and that no amount from another site is on the list.

Head office reads every project's drift in one Friday report. The meeting that used to start by passing files around starts from that page. The client sees the table the technical office is talking about.

The result

The next certificate is not a surprise. Cost, commitment, and physical progress are one picture. An argument with the client does not start from which file is right. It starts from quantity and rate.

Several sites at once are still hard. The hardness is no longer cement lost between projects. Each contract has its own file, its own purchases, and its own certificate.