Capstone: Your Overrun Prevention Plan

Welcome

Hello, and welcome. This is Super Structures General Contractors — a national general contractor headquartered in Powhatan, Virginia — here to help you and your clients build something that lasts. We're glad you're with us, and we look forward to connecting with you.

Alright, Capstone: Your Overrun Prevention Plan. Don't let the plain title fool you. Here's the part that actually matters on the job: A one-page plan with two root causes, two habits, three weekly numbers, one tool change, and one retention action is worth more than everything you learned and did not write down. Learn it well and the next job closes closer to plan than the last one.

A concrete contractor took a course like this one and went back to work. Nothing changed, because nothing was written down and nobody owned it. A year later, after another job that lost its fee to a change order nobody priced, the same contractor sat down for two hours, wrote one page, dated it, and gave each line to a person. The change-order form went in every truck. The Monday cost review started the next week. Overtime dropped under 10 percent by the third month because the crew calendar finally showed the conflict. The page is still on the wall, with two revisions in the margins from jobs that closed since. This lesson is those two hours.

Part 1: Where you lose money

From your root-cause work in Lesson 2, pick the two causes that cost you the most over the last several jobs. Use the cost codes and the post-job reviews if you have them; use your honest memory if you do not. Write one sentence each on why they keep happening. Not what happened, why. "We do change work before it is priced because the supers want to keep the owner happy and nobody ever told them not to" is a why. "Scope creep" is a label.

Part 2: The habits you will adopt

For each of the two causes, choose one prevention habit from this course and make it specific:

• The habit. Change-order discipline, estimating from history, weekly cost-to-complete, a risk register, a scope matrix with subs, early buyout.
• Exactly what it looks like on your jobs. "No change work without a signed CO or T&M authorization. Form on every truck. The super calls the PM before the work, not after."
• When it starts. Next job, or this Monday.
• Who owns it. A name. "Change-order discipline" is a wish. "No change work without a signed CO or T&M authorization, form on every truck, starts next job, superintendents own it, PM audits the change log weekly" is a plan.

Part 3: The numbers you will watch

Pick three numbers you will review every week, on a set day, with a named person running the review. Good candidates:

• Percent complete versus percent spent by cost code.
• Projected cost to complete versus budget, by job.
• Open RFIs and submittals older than the target.
• Overtime as a percent of hours.
• Unapproved change requests, count and dollars. Three is enough. Twelve is a report nobody reads.

Part 4: Tools and people

From Lesson 6, name the one tool change you will make this year, what it must do for you, and who owns the rollout, sized to your company. From Lesson 5, name the one retention action you will take this quarter and what it costs. If you cannot name the cost, you have not decided to do it.

Part 5: Commit and review

Put it all on one page. Date it. Sign it. Share it with the people whose names are on it. Review it after the next job closes: what worked, what you skipped, what changed. Revise in the margins. The page is never finished, and a page with revisions on it is proof that it is alive.

Going Deeper (Intermediate)

Make the plan visible. Share it with your superintendents and your office manager, because they will do most of the work in it, and they will tell you which lines are unrealistic before a job does. Add a line to the post-job review asking which part of the plan was followed and which was not, and what it cost when it was not. Companies that review the plan against real jobs keep it alive; companies that file it get the same overrun next year.

Expect the first revision within two jobs. The habit you chose may be the wrong one, or the number you picked may not move. That is the plan working. The failure mode is not a wrong plan; it is a plan nobody looks at.

Advanced / Pro-Level

Pros roll the one-page plan into the company's standard operating procedures once it has survived two or three jobs: the change-order rule goes into the subcontract and the kickoff agenda, the weekly review becomes a standing meeting with a template, the three numbers go on a dashboard the owner of the company reads every Monday. New PMs and supers learn the plan in their first week. The plan stops being a document and becomes how the company runs a job.

They also share the plan with the surety and the bank, because a contractor who can explain, in one page, how they prevent overruns and how they would know early if one started, is a contractor who gets more capacity and better terms. And they bring it back to the Learning Center: post the plan, or the part you are willing to share, under Lessons Learned, and the forms you built along the way under Forms & Templates. Other members' plans will give you ideas you did not have, and yours will save someone else a job's worth of fee.

Practice Challenge

Write your plan now. Two causes with a why, two specific habits with owners and start dates, three weekly numbers with a review day and a reviewer, one tool change with an owner, one retention action with a cost, a date, and a signature. Then read each line and ask: could a stranger tell whether this was done? (Answer: there is no answer key; the plan is right if every line names a person and a date and could be checked by someone outside the company, and wrong if any line could be read as a good intention.)

In Practice

The contractor with a dated page on the wall revises it after every job and can show a surety exactly how the company catches a slip early. The contractor who "learned a lot" in the course has the same overrun on the next one and cannot say why.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Listing six causes and twelve habits instead of two and two
• Habits with no owner and no start date
• Watching numbers nobody reviews on a schedule
• Writing the plan and never comparing it to a closed job
• Keeping the plan in a drawer instead of in front of the people whose names are on it

Takeaway: A one-page plan with two root causes, two habits, three weekly numbers, one tool change, and one retention action is worth more than everything you learned and did not write down.

Educational content — not legal, financial, or contractual advice. Every project and contract is different; follow your contract documents, your company's procedures, and the advice of your attorney, CPA, and surety.