How to overcome NEC4 challenges with Causeway Commercial Management

Causeway Commercial Management is the perfect tool to help you navigate the choppy waters of the NEC4 contract, and here is how:

NEC4 contracts. They can be tough to crack until you know how they work, which is no mean feat when getting a project off the ground at the same time.

Designed to encourage collaboration with a non-adversarial approach, using clear straight-forward language, they do much to help you. But approaching them successfully without the right information and tools can make your life difficult.

We have a useful overview of NEC4 contracts here, where you can find the key things contractors need to consider.

If you want to learn more about the best tools to handle NEC4’s unique challenges, and how your current systems may struggle without it, please read on. Causeway Commercial Management is the best tool for your job.

What is Causeway Commercial Management?

Causeway Commercial Management integrates and surfaces all of your commercial data in a secure cloud-based database.

The unique solution structures data in the specific work breakdown structure that your project demands. Empowering contractors to future forecast in real-time and achieve effortless application for payment without the need to re-key data from spreadsheets and other data sources.

The solution integrates with your finance, project planning and estimating systems to consolidate your project data and provide real-time visibility of earned value management and forward forecasting.

There is no more last-minute scrambling to produce reports from a dozen spreadsheets and pieces of paper, looking to get paid in good time and with actual costs.

NEC cost coding structures can catch you off guard

Every project that uses NEC Contracts Options A, B, C or D has its own unique cost coding structure.

This means all cost and value transactions must be allocated against the activity or bill of quantities depending on the form of contract. This makes managing costs and getting paid across multiple projects a real challenge.

Many of our customers came to us after realising standard finance systems simply weren’t flexible enough. While finance systems are able to capture costs effectively, they are often too rigid to handle the unique coding structure of individual projects.

Built with fixed finance controls, finance processes and coding that runs the whole business, the system cannot adjust for the requirements of individual projects. This usually results in the manual task of piecing together data in spreadsheets to submit an application for payment.

For a contractor managing multiple contracts types over many different projects it’s a real manual process to piece together data into the correct structure to get paid – usually leading to inefficient workarounds, frustration and unnecessary operating costs when reports need submitting.

Beat the coding challenge with Causeway Commercial Management

Causeway Commercial Management embraces unique and project-specific work breakdown structures (WBS), whether they’re client mandated or internally made. Removing manual processes and automating application for payment.

The solution bridges the data gap by integrating into your finance and delivery programme software. Whether they’re committed, accrued or actual; labour, plant, material and subcontract costs are surfaced in real-time and maintained against the WBS.

Gone are the days of exporting and recording costs in spreadsheets to manually structure against the right codes and then spend days pulling everything together to report on them.

Instead, with Causeway Commercial Management, you get proactive control over the project. Everything is stored on the secure cloud database. You don’t need to create workarounds because of its flexible coding system.

This coding system is project-specific and can be different on every project for every customer. Unlike rigid finance systems, you can add and remove and edit codes at any point.

With all your commercial data on the solution, you can compare it against estimates, budgets and programmes. Capturing costs in one place gives real-time visibility of value and, therefore, profitability.

Spend less time collecting and analysing data and more time optimising performance.

What do ‘integrations’ mean to you

When choosing a technology solution to close gaps left by rigid finance systems, you want confidence in its ability to work with that system.

Causeway Commercial Management is ‘agnostic’ with open integrations into the systems mentioned above.

It’s not only your financial information but the complete commercial data too. The solution integrates any estimating system so you can import estimates and BoQs. Store originals for comparison purposes or flex and amend them to create post-tender budget adjustments.

You might need to do this when moving tender allowances due to project delivery decisions or to target buying gains when improving commercial results.

By keeping the original estimated allowances, your procurement teams create orders with visibility of allowed costs. This is especially helpful on NEC contracts, providing early warning when placing orders that exceed the budget.

These integrations will also save your team the demoralising job of constant rekeying and inevitable mistakes that manual data entry causes.

Report on everything from one system

Causeway Commercial Management lets you report on finances using tools like cost value reconciliations – quickly and easily. Let’s look at cost value reconciliations as an example.

Information is often saved in several locations and needs transposing into one spreadsheet to crunch the numbers before turning them into a report. It takes an age to do and the results are outdated by the time you finish.

Even worse, you have to start from scratch next month, the month after that, and the month after that. It’s relentless.

Using Causeway Commercial Management, where the information is stored in one system, you only build the report once. Simply refresh the screen when you need to report and send it over to whoever needs it. Turn days of work into a quick, efficient and accurate process.

Match NEC4’s emphasis on the programme

The NEC puts a strong emphasis on programming. By using Causeway Commercial Management, you can turn that emphasis to your advantage.

Stay safe, secure and auditable with all data stored in a structured database that’s integrated with finance, project planning and commercial systems; your commercial forecast will be in line with your delivery programme.

You can forward forecast on project performance and earned value management while interrogating project-specific activities, resources, transactions or traditional financial coding structures.

Overcome NEC4 challenges with Causeway Commercial Management

NEC4 contracts may seem overwhelming at first because they ask you to do things differently. But they were created to help everyone involved finish a project in the best possible position.

Earning this success means equipping yourself with the right information, tools, and partner.