The Power of Project Controls

Project controls are the data gathering, data management, and analytical processes used to predict, understand, and constructively influence the time and cost outcomes of a construction project or program by communicating information in formats that assist effective management and decision-making.

In other words, construction project controls are the analytical processes and outputs used to understand and communicate project information so teams can make better decisions about schedule performance, cost exposure, risk, delays, and overruns.

While some believe that project controls live within a department, they don’t. They are a mindset that should make up the fabric of a construction organization to support overall project management.

The Construction Industry Institute helps emphasize that project control systems are an important part of the overall project management effort. They support the achievement of project objectives. In other words, project controls streamline efficiency by exposing and highlighting risk or mismanagement through key metrics.

Therefore, project controls allow for performance measurement with planning metrics and checkpoints to ensure standards are met. Even though seeing the benefits involves a relatively simple process, project controls continue to be underutilized in the construction industry.

Quick Insights: Project Controls in Construction

• What project controls are: Analytical processes that gather, manage, and communicate project information related to time and cost outcomes.

• Why they matter: They expose risk, delays, overruns, and mismanagement before those issues become larger project problems.

• What SmartPM helps track: Schedule quality, earned value analysis, critical path delay and recovery, compression, and forecasting.

• The main outcome: Higher visibility and objective, fact-based decisions that help teams better control project performance.

The Challenge with Project Controls

It is very fair to state that, in commercial construction, project controls aren’t a top priority for a large percentage of construction companies. The practical problem is not that teams lack effort. It is that many teams lack consistent, analytical processes that show whether a project is drifting from its plan before the impact becomes a delay, overrun, or dispute.

For many, contingency budgets and padding the schedule are the extent of their “project controls.” I know this because I’ve analyzed thousands of commercial construction projects.

Here are some important takeaways:

• <4% of General Contractors have a dedicated project controls team and/or process in place on their projects.
• The only companies investing in and embracing project controls reside in the upper half of the ENR’s top 400 CM firms.
• Many Commercial Construction Companies in the United States leverage project management tools. However, they do not invest much in any project control functions.
• The lack of project controls contributes to significant overruns, delays, and disputes.

SmartPM Analyzed Over 50,000 Schedules and Found: 

SmartPM Analyzed Over 50,000 Schedules and Found:

This poses yet another unfortunate reality: the lack of project controls has a great effect on the global economy and the environment.

According to McKinsey, the construction industry wastes $1.6 trillion dollars annually in overspending, usually resulting from project mismanagement, delays, and overruns.

Take a moment to imagine the potential of what almost two trillion dollars could have been spent on every year.

A Broken Record

If hearing “construction delays and overruns” sounds like a broken record, it’s because it is. It’s what every technology claims to solve.

Project management systems, mobile apps, BIM, drones, and document control tech all claim to help eliminate delays and overruns. But if the goal is to systematically optimize construction, project controls are the only real answer.

The reality is that delays and overruns have the ability to be negated wholly through analytics designed to support project controls. Project controls provide ample opportunity to fix these issues, but the answer is at the crossroads of “Project Controls” and “Technology.”

Project Controls vs. Project Management

Project management is the broader discipline of planning and executing the work. It involves organizing people, processes, schedules, budgets, communication, and project delivery activities so the job can move from plan to completion.

Project controls are more analytical. They measure performance, surface risk, and support decisions around time and cost outcomes. In construction, that means using project information to understand whether the schedule is realistic, whether progress is tracking as expected, whether delays are affecting the critical path, and whether future milestones are at risk.

That is why project controls should not be viewed only as a department. They are a mindset that supports project management by giving teams better visibility, better metrics, and better information for fact-based decisions.

Key Schedule Control Metrics

Any given construction project has a world of data behind it, which controls help bring to light. The metrics below are schedule-focused controls, not the full universe of cost, risk, and change controls. However, they are among the most helpful ways to understand schedule health and improve project outcomes.

Here are five schedule controls we believe to be most helpful in delivering the highest quality project:

• Schedule Quality: Assesses how well a schedule is built and whether best practices are incorporated.
• Earned Value Analysis (EVA): Measures a project’s cumulative progress at a given point and serves as an early warning sign for potential progress challenges.
• Critical Path Delay and Recovery: Tracks the number of days delayed due to impacts on the critical path and the changes made to overcome those delays.
• Compression: Gauges how much work is being fit into the remaining project duration and how that work compares to the plan.
• Forecasting: Uses historical performance to predict future end dates of key milestones.

The metrics above track actual insights by assessing activities required against budget or volume of material. But how do you begin using project controls as part of your daily practices?

This is a tall order, and definitely easier said than done.

How to Put Project Controls Into Practice

A practical construction project controls process does not need to start with complexity. It should start with consistent visibility into the schedule and the project information that supports better decisions.

1. Establish a baseline. Start with a plan that gives the team a clear point of comparison for future performance.
2. Review schedule quality. Confirm that the schedule is built well enough to support reliable analysis and decision-making.
3. Track earned value and progress. Use earned value analysis to understand cumulative progress and identify potential progress challenges early.
4. Monitor critical path delay and recovery. Track impacts to the critical path and the actions being taken to overcome those delays.
5. Use forecasting to guide decisions. Apply historical performance to predict future end dates of key milestones and support fact-based decisions.

Using Automation

The easiest way to control project outcomes is to put controls around your processes so all stakeholders can quickly gain access to project health data in ways they never have before.

Imagine having an eye on subcontractor performance, risk, impacts, delays, inefficiencies, predictions, and more.

The result? Objective, fact-based decisions.

Pulling that visibility into a dedicated project workspace makes it consistent in practice, since every schedule update and key project-controls metric for a given job is centralized in one workspace, rather than scattered across email threads and spreadsheets..

Automation also helps create a consistent reporting cadence, which means teams can review the same types of project health information regularly and make faster decisions.

Furthermore, the metrics offered by automated project controls have a lot to offer the construction industry, such as:

• Reduce costs: Using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) reduces the overall cost of projects by allowing critical decisions to be made quickly.
• Increase Productivity: Effectively manage team members by providing checks and balances on project activities.
• Higher visibility: Project controls allow team members across the board to be up to date on the construction schedule. An executive dashboard takes that visibility up a level, giving leaders a single rollup of schedule health and risk across every active project instead of one job at a time.
• Mitigate Risk: Implementing mitigation strategies allows risks to be avoided, accepted, reduced, or transferred.
• Improve Margins: By optimizing construction schedules properly, many projects are able to finish under budget by executing best planning and actual practices.

By using an automated process, like SmartPM’s schedule controls platform, more visibility into actual project processes becomes clear. Additionally, critical decisions concerning end dates and budgets have the accurate data to back them up.

Related SmartPM Resources

For more guidance on project controls, scheduling, analytics, and planning, explore these SmartPM resources:

• The Ultimate Guide to Construction Project Controls
• Top 7 Construction Project Control Tools
• The Essential Guide to Construction Analytics
• Top 10 Types of Construction Schedules
• The Complete Guide to Construction Project Planning

Frequently Asked Questions About Project Controls

What are project controls in construction?

Project controls in construction are the data gathering, data management, and analytical processes used to understand, predict, and influence time and cost outcomes. They help teams communicate project information in formats that support effective management and decision-making.

What is the difference between project controls and project management?

Project management is the broader discipline of planning and executing the work. Project controls support project management by measuring performance, surfacing risk, and providing the project information needed to make better decisions about schedule, delays, overruns, and cost outcomes.

What are examples of construction project control metrics?

Examples of construction project control metrics include schedule quality, earned value analysis, critical path delay and recovery, compression, and forecasting. These metrics help teams understand schedule health, progress, risk, and likely future milestone outcomes.

How does automation improve project controls?

Automation improves project controls by giving stakeholders faster access to project health data, KPIs, schedule updates, risk information, and forecasting. It supports higher visibility, a more consistent reporting cadence, and objective, fact-based decisions.