Construction Margin Control System

Most contractors find out a job lost money when the job is over. By then there is nothing to do. This system exists to tell you in month two, while you can still act.

Built by a construction professional with 15 years in the industry, across complex projects worth over 200 million euros.

Why jobs lose money without anyone noticing

Cost is incurred continuously. Cost is measured at intervals. Between those two facts sits a gap of six to ten weeks, and everything that goes wrong on a project goes wrong inside it. By the time the number reaches your accounts, the work is finished, the crew has moved on, and the decision that would have fixed it is two months behind you.

This is why a job can be twelve percent underwater and feel fine. Nothing on your desk is lying to you. The loss is real and already locked in, but it has not yet been written down anywhere.

What this system does about it

It measures the three things that move earlier than an invoice: what you have committed, what you have earned against what you have spent, and an honest forecast to complete. Then it checks eight early-warning signals against them, every month, and tells you which ones have fired.

Forty-five to sixty minutes per job, per month. Five numbers typed in. Everything else calculates.

What you get

• Margin Control Dashboard (Excel) — Setup, Packages, Monthly Review, Signals and Dashboard tabs. The eight signals calculate themselves and flag OK, WATCH or ACT. A worked six-month job is included so you can see the system working before you enter anything of your own.
• The Margin Control Method (21-page PDF) — setting a job up so it can be controlled, the monthly routine in order, the thresholds with real numbers, what to do when a job turns (diagnosed by cause, because the remedy depends entirely on the cause), and how variations leak margin.
• Job Costing & Cost Control (Excel) — budget versus actual by cost code, bill of quantities, margin by package.
• Cash Flow Forecast (Excel) — eighteen months of receipts, payments, retention and the trough, before you are in it.
• Change Order Register (Excel) — every variation, its status, and what has been executed but never instructed.

The signal that saves jobs

If committed plus incurred cost on a package exceeds 85% of its budget while the package is less than 70% complete, that package will overrun. It fires months before the overrun appears in your accounts, because commitment happens at order and progress happens later. The window to act on it is short, and it is the difference between re-procuring the remaining scope and writing off the job.

Who this is for

Contractors, site managers and quantity surveyors running jobs from €100k to €5M who work in Excel and are not going to buy Procore. It is a cost control system for work you have already won. It is not an estimating or bidding calculator.

Technical

Microsoft Excel (2016 or later, Microsoft 365). No macros. No subscription. Works offline. Instant download after purchase.

60-day money-back guarantee

Use it on a live job for two months. If it does not show you something about that job you did not already know, email us and we will refund you in full. No questions, no forms.

One purchase. Yours permanently, including every future version.