Welcome! We're excited to share with you a recording of our exclusive webinar held on Thursday, 26th September 2024. In this session, we took a deep dive into the Plant Hire functionality within Pegasus CIS 5, featuring our special guest speaker, Louise Dickenson, a Pegasus CIS specialist. 

Whether you manage External or Internal Plant Hire, this webinar is packed with valuable insights on how Pegasus CIS 5 can streamline your processes and enhance job costing efficiency. Here’s a quick look at what we covered:

• External Plant Hire: Learn how to manage purchase orders, track job costs, and monitor plant hire returns for better control over site operations.
• Internal Plant Hire: Discover how to manage company-owned equipment, recharge jobs, and automatically invoice for plant usage, including additional fees like delivery, collection, and damage.

This session is full of actionable tips to help you optimise your plant hire operations and maximise cost recovery using Pegasus CIS 5. Whether you attended live or are catching up now, we’re confident you’ll find great value in this recording.
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Hit play, and let’s get started!

The construction industry is well known for tight margins meaning that businesses within this sector must work extra hard at monitoring spend to ensure they make a profit. In fact, research has revealed that 69% of projects go over budget by at least 10% and only 31% come within 10% of their original plan. 

Why do construction projects go over budget?
The construction industry is notorious for overspending, and typically, the main reasons a construction project goes over budget is lack of planning and budget control, but communication breakdowns and unforeseen circumstances, such as weather, can also play a part.

7 tips for keeping your construction projects on budget
It can be challenging to keep your construction projects running on budget, but not impossible. With good cost control measures in place, you can ensure your projects are more profitable and efficient. Let’s look at our 7 tips for managing your construction costs:

Thorough estimates
You can have all the best cost control techniques in place, but if you don’t take your time to produce thorough estimates then it’s likely they will fail. Putting together thorough estimates is something that cannot be rushed and it’s important you examine all areas of the project such as overheads, permits, labour, equipment, and materials, and draw up a list of miscellaneous costs you may potentially encounter. Don’t forget to use experience from similar jobs and compare their costs to make your estimates more accurate and get inputs from various job functions to support the process.

Daily reports
Conducting reports daily will highlight any areas that may be going array and will help you identify if costs begin to creep up, so you can put measures in place sooner rather than later, before you run into disruptions.

Communication
In much the same way as regular reporting is beneficial, so is strong communication, as you are more likely to stay on budget if your team understands what they need to do, and when. Open lines of communication can also help you deal with costly issues as soon as they arise, rather than risk going over budget while it takes time to resolve them.

Limited change orders
Changes mid-project are one of the highest areas of expenditure, as contracts managers make changes requested by the customer. By changing your agreement to making changes only in emergencies or rectifying your own errors, you will limit the damage to your bottom line.

Back-up
You should have back-up plans in place in case something happens which threatens your budget like the breakdown of machinery or loss of a crucial contractor. Consider all potential risks, like the ones mentioned, and consider a back-up plan which could help mitigate unexpected additional costs.

Trusted subcontractors
Subcontractors are not employees and therefore they can become an unpredictable source of extra income and delays, and you could experience quality control issues too. It pays to put together a list of trusted subcontractors you have previously had a good experience with, so you don’t need to take the risk in finding new ones, or encounter costs mid-job while you source additional contractors.

Construction Management Software
Ultimately the most efficient way of keeping your costs under control is with robust construction management software to give you complete visibility, reporting and clear lines of communication. A good construction solution will give you control over all aspects of your construction projects so you can reduce costs, stay within your timeframes, and maximise profitability.

Final thoughts…The construction industry is a fast-paced environment, and it can be particularly challenging to stay on budget and within your set timeframe as the industry is well known for overspending and over-running due to the unpredictability of the environment. However, by implementing some clear cost control methods such as regular reporting, clear lines of communication, only employing trusted subcontractors and providing thorough estimates you can begin to regain control of your costs and protect your bottom line. Investing in a robust construction management solution is one sure fire way to help you manage all areas of your construction projects and stay on time and budget more efficiently.

To learn more about our construction solution Pegasus CIS 5, please contact us today, and arrange a free demo to see it in action.

​One of the largest industry sectors, with a gross value of £122 billion in 2021, construction has rebounded in a big way post pandemic. Some figures suggest that workloads spiked by 66% in the 12 months to July 2021 (The State of the Field Service Sector, a report published by BigChange). 

However, in parallel, 2022 is set to experience a major labour shortage of around 665,000 construction workers. According to trade association ABC, an estimated 1.2 million construction workers will leave their jobs in 2022, accounting for much of the shortfall. At the same time, entry-level construction laborers increased by 72.8% against an increase in the total number of construction workers of just 25%, highlighting a large skills gap. 

6000 wasted hours a year 
When you consider that poor back office processes in the industry are collectively taking around 6000 hours every year, it’s clear that rapid action to help mitigate this shortfall is required. 

One of the challenges in addressing poor productivity is that construction companies have been slow to embrace digitalisation, and instead have relied on spreadsheets and paper-based processes for longer than many of their peers. As workloads have spiralled, they’ve invested their energy in keeping up with the deluge, fighting against the inefficient processes in play to a degree, rather than taking a longer term view. Given that nine out of ten projects were delivered late in 2021, and over two thirds (69%) went over budget by at least 10%, it’s clear this isn’t sustainable.   

In fact, taking a step back and understanding the level of back office inefficiencies, and taking action to modernise and digitalise, can free up valuable resources to instil greater productivity, collaboration and accuracy, and support skills and labour shortages which are so prevalent currently.

Expediting digital investment by 70% 
The good news is that we are now seeing significant traction in this area with more than 70% of those involved in construction technology planning to invest more in 2022 compared with 2021 according to research.

CIS systems in particular, which incorporate financials, can facilitate greater efficiency, productivity and collaboration. When it comes to project management, they can provide a comprehensive overview which spans all contractors, subcontractors and employees, thus ensuring the right people and equipment are at the right site at any given time.

Crucially, they can deliver enhanced communications and workflows which can flag anomalies and provide trends and insights. These insights also support the customer experience, as documents and reminders can be stored to manage communications across the entire customer journey. In turn this of course helps to mitigate the time, cost and frustration associated with relying on excel and long e-mail chains to manage time-sensitive decisions and activity.  

Effective contract costing can make or break the profitability of a particular job. Fully integrated with financials, the best systems span all elements of contracts management, managing contract costing, valuations, sales applications, purchasing and subcontractors, from payment applications, VAT invoicing and cash receipt matching. Through being able to measure actual expenses against forecasted costs to flag gaps and facilitate intervention before they get a chance to escalate, costs and audit trails can be identified in real-time. This can then be used to support short term tweaks in the project’s budgets and/or timeline, and feed into estimates and projections for future projects to increase accuracy. 

Embracing a new digital era 
There’s no doubt that the future of construction is buoyant. Modern, future-ready back office systems and processes are therefore needed to support a new era and ensure the sector can capitalise on its growth potential.

Ultimately, the right kind of digitalisation can help equip the construction industry for the future through instilling resilience and agility, and reducing the impact of the unpredictable. 

Those technologies making the biggest difference are ones which capture, analyse and distribute insights in order to manage a project faster, more responsively, and more accurately. These insights help teams anticipate and respond to unpredictable issues quicker, or even to prevent them before they arise. In strategic terms, this results in increased opportunities to improve worker productivity and bring more jobs in on time and on budget, not only helping to mitigate the labour shortage, but enhancing the customer experience and reputation along the way.  

To learn more about our CIS solution, CIS 5, please contact us today to discover how it could help your projects or to arrange a personalised demo for your business.