TL;DR

📊 🔍 Most SMB general contractors already have the data they need—but they’re not using it.

Small project details (like overtime labor or untracked deliveries) can add up to big financial hits. Without real visibility into field productivity and financial performance, you can’t spot patterns, predict risk, or make better decisions.

Key Action Items:

1. Start connecting field productivity data to your budgets.

2. Use a CDE or dashboard to break down silos between field notes, RFIs, and contracts.

3. Look for patterns in project costs, delays, and supplier trends.

4. Treat your data like a jobsite—it only works if it's structured and active.

The Problem: Small Misses, Big Impact

Here’s the thing—project managers and supers are trained to get the job done. Fast. At all costs. But what happens when small adjustments, like running an extra crew or making an extra supplier run get overlooked?

They get buried in spreadsheets, lost in emails, or left off the daily report. But over time, these things compound. Suddenly, you’re $200K over budget, the timeline is slipping, and nobody knows why.

And even if you do spot it later, it’s too late to do anything about it.

What Most Contractors Miss

The data is there. Sub productivity logs, RFIs, delivery tickets, COs, crew timesheets… it's all being collected. But most of it is:

• Siloed in different systems

• Incomplete or inconsistent

• Not tied back to the original contract terms

So when things start to go sideways, there’s no real way to trace the root cause—let alone adjust in real time.

If you’re not tracking productivity data closely and connecting it to the contract and project goals, you’re operating in the dark.

The Real Cost of Not Knowing

Let’s say you added a weekend crew to hit a milestone. It worked. But the labor cost blew past the allocated budget line, and no one communicated it back to the office.

Now accounting’s confused, the owner’s pushing back on a pay app, and the project margin is underwater.

Or maybe you made an extra supplier run, paid a premium, and didn’t log it. A few of those can shake your cash flow, especially if the contract doesn’t allow recovery through change orders.

When these small details go untracked, they don’t just hurt the project—they damage your overall business health and owners and executive can't stay the course of achieving the business objectives like expanding into new markets or making the right investments in people.

How to Turn Data into Insight

Start simple:

• Connect sub productivity to daily costs

• Track field adjustments and log the why behind them

• Tie RFIs and field changes back to contracts

Then, level up with tech:

• Use a CDE to keep project documents and field data in one place

• Layer on dashboards (like ProNovos Construction Intelligence or Power BI) to see what’s slipping and why

• Use ML tools like nPlan to forecast risk based on past performance

This isn’t about being flashy with dashboards. It’s about making sure you know exactly how small decisions in the field impact your business in real time.

Final Thought: Your Project Is a Mirror of Your Business

Every project has its own economy—but too often, PMs and executives treat each one like it’s on an island.

In reality, every missed delivery, scope shift, or budget blowout on one job ripples into the next and vibrates across the chain. The most successful contractors are connecting the dots—project by project, detail by detail.

📌 If you want better outcomes, you need better visibility. And that starts with understanding your data.

Thanks for reading! Until next time,

L.D. Humphreys