Construction budgets are great diagnostic tools for taking a quick look under the hood.

Are you getting the most of your budgets?

1. Phases and transitions
   1. From estimating to planned execution to tracking
   2. Need a detailed section for tracking self-perform and labor items
   3. Budget needs to be set up for proper tracking
2. Subcontracts and purchase orders
   1. Track committed costs (PO / subcontract amount) and billed to date
   2. Committed costs provide a big picture view and invoiced to date gives more detail of progress
   3. Add to project budget dashboard – track % billed to date versus planned, % complete by time and by costs
3. Self-perform and labor items
   1. Use a second more detailed budget to track these items and summarize on dashboard
   2. Create a budget with planned and actual by time unit like Weeks or Months or Days depending on your project
   3. Create key tracking metrics for each line item like “Pipe Installed” so that you can track % utilized versus % complete, etc. – use daily production sheets for details from the field

For project managers a good budget is like blood test results for a doctor. It gives us a quick snapshot of what is going on inside and where we might have problems.

Take-Action Items:

1. Set up a proper budgeting system for your projects