Construction project delivery has become increasingly sophisticated over the past two decades, offering new options — including design-build and construction management at risk (CM@R) — that give general contractors (GCs) more influence and control over projects and offer new services that can help win business.
However, this increased level of project control demands an increased level of budget management that traditional processes and tools do not adequately support. Fortunately, for GCs who pursue the project and business benefits of taking on design-build or CM@R projects, new technology exists that provides the design trending and budgeting insight and control necessary for success.
Traditional Options Can Waste Time and Money
In the conventional approach to design-build or CM@R project delivery, the design process is broken into a few phases, with each phase including a budget review conducted by the construction manager. Design can progress significantly between these intermittent reviews and project costs can spin out of control before the construction manager realizes what is happening. Budget overruns can necessitate unplanned value engineering that halts project progress and requires revisions to previously completed design work — which then leads to another round of budget review and updates. Design trending, which supports continuous and in-depth design analysis and can identify and help avoid potential budget problems, is not typically part of these conventional approaches.
A Better Way
Assemble Systems offers a solution that delivers the level of budgeting insight and control required for complex design-build and CM@R projects. The affordable, flexible software creates Microsoft Excel–based reports using the precise, up-to-date data in the building information model (BIM). The Assemble Connect add-in facilitates direct connection from Assemble to Excel. Assemble conditions the data across multiple versions of a model in an automated manner, the data can then be used to easily develop trending reports and graphs for better project insight.
