EPM built for Construction
Monday, 4 September 2023
Built transforms project forecasting and reporting with Board
Built, one of the country's largest private construction groups, creates a sophisticated, cloud-based project forecasting and reporting platform that supports project managers, the executive team and the board of directors with timely and insightful access to financial and non-financial information and project metrics.
About Built: one of the country's largest private construction groups
Built, a privately owned company founded in 1998 in Australia, takes pride in its national diversification as a general contractor and its position as one of the country's largest private construction groups. The company's hallmark is its client-centred approach, which has earned it a reputation as the most responsive partner in the industry, with extensive experience working with tier-one companies and large corporations.
Built's financial stability, combined with its unwavering commitment to quality, ensures its clients can rely on the company for scale and certainty. Its solid financial record, substantial bonding capacity, and sound liquidity profile have contributed to its track record of sustainable growth, which has helped Built earn clients' trust across diverse sectors over the past 25 years.
Built's portfolio includes large-scale new builds, complex refurbishments, and intricate fit-outs.
The Challenge: forecasting and reporting processes unsustainable in growth environment
In 2017, the finance team at Built recognised that the vast amount of spreadsheets and manual work required to support project forecasting and reporting was unsustainable. The Excel-based reporting environment seemed to reflect a collation of opinions rather than a single version of an uncontested truth. Project Manager Review packs (80 pages for each project) were generated, saved as a PDF, printed and distributed every month. Forecast updates as outcomes of the review were cumbersome to integrate, and the aggregation to regional and line of business levels for management team reporting was error-prone.
Growth beyond the 2017 $1b turnover mark would have been near impossible to support with the incumbent technology and business process mix. It was time to move beyond Excel.
The Solution: Unleashing the power of streamlined, data-driven forecasting & reporting
After a market scan, Built selected Board as its new enterprise performance management (epm) and business intelligence (bi) platform. The platform seamlessly integrates with Built's construction ERP system (JobPac), CRM system (Salesforce), and other source systems holding e.g. health & safety (HSE) and environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics to deliver a single location to meet all reporting and forecasting requirements.
Actuals and forecasts for secured and unsecured projects, variations (approved, un/submitted) alongside actual overhead expenses and balance sheet data get loaded into Board to facilitate project manager reviews incl the recording of project overlays, the identification of risks and opportunities, revenue and margin modelling for unsecured (identified, unidentified) projects, and overhead forecasts and allocations.
Actuals and updated forecasts then flow through to the (online and interactive) executive management team pack as well as group and board reporting.
At Board Beyond, held in August 2023, Jason Mortimer and Brent Smith provided an overview of the solution. A recording of the presentation can be found here.
The Benefits: One source of information in one (online) location
Today, Built turns over $2.7b with a smaller finance team required to support forecasting and reporting across the group than 7 years ago. All insights are accessible online. Project Managers' review meetings are conducted 'on screen' and forecast updates are performed 'live', including the recording of commentary to substantiate forecast changes. The (financial) impact of a forecast change on a project, program, region and line of business is obtainable instantly.
Process efficiencies, a single version of truth, trust in numbers, reduced forecasting and reporting cycles, and transparent data lineage are some of the many benefits achieved. Most impressive, in our opinion, is the industry-leading transformation from paper-based reporting and forecasting cycles to an end-to-end digitally enabled, deeply embedded performance management process.
When asked about key learnings, Jason Mortimer, Deputy CFO at Built said: "It can't be a finance solution; it's got to be a business solution. An accountant can't tell a project manager how to do his or her building job. The process flow within the solution has to reflect how the business operates."
The Future: continuous evolution of the performance management platform
The finance team at Built is laser-sharp about extracting more value out of the Board platform. A new 'S-curve' methodology to forecast unsecured construction cost at a more detailed level, ESG, and HSE reporting extensions are all currently on the cards, making Built's performance management solution the most comprehensive in the Australian construction industry.
At mecklemore, we are proud of working with an industry leader, observing the company's stellar growth and success, and playing our little part in enabling process efficiencies and data-driven decision-making across the organisation.
Are you seeking to transform performance management and analytics in your construction business? Talk to us about our industry blueprint and how we can assist you in getting your transformation off the ground quickly.
