Reporting Up: Project Reviews with the Owner of the Company

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, Reporting Up. Don't let the plain title fool you. Here's the part that actually matters on the job: The owner of the company needs the truth about every project, on a schedule, in numbers, because every job's cost, billing, and cash rolls up into whether the company itself is healthy. Learn it well and you'll be the project manager the owner trusts with the next bigger job.

Projects do not exist on their own. A job that is quietly losing money, or quietly billing behind its costs, shows up months later as a company that cannot make payroll in a slow quarter. The monthly project review is how the owner of the company sees each project clearly, and the portfolio review is how the owner sees all of them together.

The monthly project review

Each project manager, with the superintendent, meets with the owner of the company, or the operations leader on a larger firm, once a month per project. Thirty to forty-five minutes. The format is the same every month so the owner can compare jobs and months at a glance.

• Cost to complete: what has been spent, what it will take to finish, and the projected final cost against the contract value. The profit that implies, compared with the profit that was bid.
• Schedule: percent complete, days ahead or behind, and the completion date you actually believe.
• Billing and cash: billed to date, collected to date, retainage held, and whether the job is over-billed or under-billed against the cost of work in place.
• Change orders: approved, pending, and the ones the owner of the project is disputing, with dollar amounts.
• Risks: the three things most likely to hurt the job in the next sixty days and what is being done about each.
• Help needed: decisions or resources only the company owner can provide.

Why the numbers matter beyond the project

The projected final cost from every active job feeds the company's work-in-progress schedule, which is how a construction company's accountant, banker, and insurance carrier judge whether the company is profitable. Billing against cost feeds the cash forecast. Remaining contract value feeds backlog, which tells the owner whether to hire, hold, or chase work. A project manager who reports an optimistic cost to complete is not protecting the project; they are misleading the company's financial statements.

The portfolio review

Monthly or quarterly, the company owner reviews every active project on one page: contract value, projected final cost, projected profit, percent complete, over or under billing, and a status color. Then the questions that only make sense across jobs: Which superintendents are stretched across two projects? Which sub is behind on three jobs at once? Is the company's cash tied up in retainage on jobs that finished months ago? What does backlog look like six months out, and what work should the estimators be chasing?

Going Deeper (Intermediate)

The hardest habit is reporting bad news early. A projected loss reported in month three can usually be reduced. The same loss reported at closeout is just a loss, plus a company owner who wonders what else they are not being told. Make it the rule: the projected final cost changes the month you learn the information, not the month you have a plan to fix it.

Standardize the one-page project report so every PM fills in the same boxes. The owner should never have to decode a different format for each job.

Advanced / Pro-Level

Pros separate three conversations that often get tangled: the project review (how is this job doing), the portfolio review (how are all jobs doing and what does that mean for the company), and the lessons-learned review at the end of each job (what do we change in how we estimate, buy, and build). Each has its own meeting and its own document.

They also tie the review to the estimating department. Every month, the difference between bid cost and projected final cost by trade goes back to the estimators, so the next bid is built on what jobs actually cost, not what they were hoped to cost.

On the owner's side, pros ask one more question in every review: what would you need from me to make this number better? That turns the review from an audit into a working session, and it is usually where the best decisions in the company get made.

Practice Challenge

In the monthly review, a PM reports the job at the bid profit, but the super mentions that the mechanical sub is three weeks behind and the schedule has a liquidated-damages clause. The PM says they are "working on it." What should the company owner do, and what should the PM have done? (Answer: the owner should ask for the number: the days of exposure, the daily rate, and the cost of acceleration, and should expect the projected final cost to move this month to reflect the most likely outcome, with a recovery plan beside it. The PM should have brought that number into the room, with options, rather than reporting the bid profit and hoping the recovery works.)

In Practice

A company owner with eight active projects who gets the same one-page report from every PM on the first Tuesday of each month, and who holds a ninety-minute portfolio review the following week, knows the company's position before the accountant does. The owner who gets a phone call when a job "has a problem" learns about it when it is already a loss.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Reporting the bid profit instead of the projected profit
• Waiting until there is a plan to fix a problem before reporting it
• A different report format for every project
• Reviewing projects one at a time and never all together
• Keeping the estimators out of the loop on what jobs actually cost

Takeaway: The owner of the company needs the truth about every project, on a schedule, in numbers, because every job's cost, billing, and cash rolls up into whether the company itself is healthy.

Educational content — not legal, safety, or contractual advice. Meeting practices vary by company and project; follow your contract, your company's procedures, and the OSHA and local requirements that apply to your site.