How Construction Cost Management Can Make (Or Break) Your Projects

Construction project management, and more specifically, construction cost management is a complex dance between numbers, schedules, clients and vendors. Contractors often have to balance between owners, stakeholders, subs and inspectors. Add in the budgetary concerns that plague every project, and it can feel like a constant battle of putting out fires.

Tracking costs and risk and keeping a project on budget can be one of the biggest hurdles in a building project, and finding efficiencies in this area can make all the difference in delivering a project on time and on budget. Management teams often have to navigate information silos, which increases risk due to outdated or missing information, unreliable response times, and convoluted processes involving a variety of vendors, systems, and products. Most importantly, teams need accurate, real-time data on the financial health of the overall project so that well-informed decisions can be made quickly.

Efficient cost control is critical for all projects to ensure a balanced cash flow and that all changes are accounted for and paid on time. To this end, Autodesk has added powerful cost management workflows to the BIM 360 platform which will enable teams to manage all cost-related construction activities in one place.

BIM 360 Brings Construction Cost Management to A Single Platform

 With the Cost Management Module, BIM 360 gives construction teams the power to efficiently manage all cost-related activity

With the Cost Management Module, BIM 360 gives construction teams the power to efficiently manage all cost-related activity and change order workflows by enabling real-time collaboration with all stakeholders. With all activities up-to-date and centralized in a common data platform, or single source of truth for the project, it allows for the most accurate view of the budget and the most comprehensive cost control available helping teams maintain a positive cash flow, reduce risk and maximize profit.

By adding Cost Management into your workflow you can visualize cost related risk by monitoring and tracking budget items and cost impacts in real-time providing a clear picture into the financial health of your project. Configurable features allow you to customize the software to suit your project needs and preferences including detailed hierarchical build ups, custom segment options, and master lists. Easily create multiple project level markup configurations to apply to potential change orders (PCOs), requests for change orders (RCOs) or owner change orders (OCOs) before submitting to the owner. Create, import and manage your own document templates using field names that populate directly from the system to quickly generate standard format documentation for distribution for change order pricing, request and approval process.  

 By adding Cost Management into your workflow you can visualize cost related risk by monitoring and tracking budget items

The module also offers a built-in Contract Creation/Management tool which allows users to create, edit, and view supplier contracts and compile appendices from multiple locations into a single package. With everything available in one framework, there’s no guesswork in accountability.

 Use the new Contract Creation/Management tool to create, edit, and view supplier contracts

Managing the change orders process just got easier. Cost Management streamlines upstream and downstream change order workflows creating clear accountability and ensuring nothing slips through the cracks, including:

Logging and detailing all potential change orders (PCOs)

Upstream budget requests for change orders (RCO) and formal owner change orders (OCOs)

Downstream request for quotations (RFQs)

Supplier change orders (SCOs)

 Cost Management streamlines upstream and downstream change order workflows creating clear accountability

These powerful features are designed to bring greater control and fluidity to your project, increasing efficiency and minimizing risk and help you deliver quality results, on time and within budget.