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If you are hiring subcontractors to work on your projects, you likely want to keep track of how they are performing for you. Being able to objectively measure subcontractor performance is critical for project managers, so that they can make key decisions to keep their projects running smoothly. However, subcontractor performance management is difficult if you don’t have the right tools in place to measure productivity.
Getting out of the dark
Subcontractor performance evaluation is more than just measuring productivity; it’s about creating a benchmark for what subcontractor performance should be. This involves defining a measureable outcome, such as the expected daily progress a subcontractor needs to perform in order to complete work on time. Regardless of the type of subcontractor, you need to establish the planned daily progress so that you can compare it to the actual daily progress.
4castplus enables you to measure planned versus actual subcontractor performance and provides real-time indicators of potential delays. It also gives you access to historical records of performance on all hired subcontractors, so that you can establish benchmarks for expected performance and compare subcontractors to each other on metrics like cost versus time versus performance. This equips the project manager with the information to determine which subcontractor is the best fit for an upcoming project, whether they’re looking for a top-performer, best price or a combination of both.
Effective subcontractor management
It’s hard enough monitoring the performance of one subcontractor let alone a dozen of them simultaneously. This is where the right subcontrator management software, like 4castplus, is great for organizing and processing a lot of data all at once and then presenting it to you in easy to read reports.
4castplus allows you to capture the planned daily average progress for any item of work. One key metric that can be captured, for example, is progress quantity. Progress quantity is the measurable amount and rate that the subcontractor is hired to complete.
Let’s say you hire a civil contractor to excavate 23,000 yd3 of dirt and haul to a stockpile. In this case, the progress quantities are as follows:
- Planned Amount: 23,000
- Rate (UOM): Cubic Yards
- Planned Daily Average: 2,300
When you prime the software with these all of these values, you are able to measure incremental progress as the work is underway and compare that to the planned amounts. In the example below, the subcontractor is performing behind plan by 130yd3 per day, so the project manager can monitor this rate over time and decide what to do if this becomes an ongoing issue.
- Planned Amount: 23,000
- Planned Daily Average: 2,300
- Actual Daily Average: 2,170
- Total Actual to date: 14,210
Trending: tracking productivity over time
4castplus also provides timeline charts that track whether subcontractors are trending upwards or downwards in terms of their performance. So, if that average daily productivity continues to perform behind plan – or even gets worse – you’re able to cut your losses.
Weighing productivity versus cost
Productivity goals still need to be met within the cost and labor-hour constraints originally set out in the work schedule. Your subcontractor could be recruiting extra bodies to work on the job and expensing more to the project than planned, for example. Subcontractor management software ensures subcontractors are on target in terms of productivity and cost.
4castplus reports on many key metrics that will provide the project manager with the complete picture on the balance between time, performance and cost, like:
- Planned Cost per Unit versus Actual Cost per Unit
- Planned Hours per Unit versus Actual Hours per Unit
- Productivity Index, including productivity trend chart
- Percent Complete
- Percent Hours Complete
- Percent Spent (cost)
- Scheduled Daily Average
