Turning Schedule Data Into Accountability and Results

The Challenge

Delays Put Funding At Risk

KCG Companies is one of the country’s leading affordable housing developers, building homes for families, seniors, and working households in 10 states across the country. Their projects carry real stakes: financed through complex stacks of federal and state funding, including LIHTC, HUD, HOME, and AHP, each with hard completion deadlines tied to regulatory compliance. When schedules slip, the financial consequences are immediate. KCG calls it “The Burn”: the calculated cost of delay on an active project, typically $400,000 to $800,000 per month. A delay is never just a construction problem. It is families and seniors waiting longer for a home.

“The three most important things we can do are deliver on time, on budget, and at quality.”

-Andy Wilson, Chief Administrative Officer, KCG Companies 

To meet that standard, KCG brought scheduling in-house and hired a dedicated Scheduling Project Manager. But the challenge went beyond producing better schedules. A previous third-party scheduling arrangement had created a disconnect: site teams couldn’t get the changes they needed reflected in the schedule, leaving investors and leadership without an accurate picture of where projects actually stood. Even with schedules rebuilt from scratch (with sound quality) , the next problem was clear: how do you get an entire construction organization, from superintendent to executive, to trust and act on schedule data?

Why SmartPM

Clarity From Complex Schedules

After evaluating several platforms, KCG selected SmartPM for its ability to transform complex Microsoft Project files into clear, actionable insights that any member of the construction team could understand, without specialized training.

“I loved the data points. I loved how there were graphs that easily explained what we were looking at. We had a project that was over 10,000 lines, 105 buildings, each with its own schedule within it. Just a beast. SmartPM broke it down and said: from last week’s schedule to this week’s, here are the activities that should have started and should have finished. It made it so much easier for my on-site team to focus on those tasks instead of getting lost in the weeds.”

-Kaitlynn Kimball, Scheduling Project Manager, KCG Companies

“Before SmartPM, I did not know I could show this much from an MPP file. Not at all.”

-Kaitlynn Kimball, Scheduling Project Manager, KCG Companies

What Changed 

Automated Reporting Replaced 
40+ Hours of Manual Work Per Week

After each weekly schedule update, SmartPM automatically delivers a plain-language report to every superintendent and project manager, showing exactly what was scheduled, what happened, and what needs attention. What previously took 10-plus hours per project to produce manually now arrives in under an hour, directly in their inbox.

“If I do an update on Monday without SmartPM, the site team wouldn’t get a report from me until probably Thursday, and all of those activities that should have happened would have already been delayed. Now they get the delay analysis within an hour, automatically.”

-Kaitlynn Kimball, Scheduling Project Manager, KCG Companies

Schedule Performance Tied Directly to Employee Compensation

KCG connected SmartPM data to their annual bonus structure, selecting five metrics that best reflect schedule health across the life of a project. The result was immediate behavioral change across the construction team.

“[Our Construction teams] are very sharp with the SmartPM [tools] now.”

-Kaitlynn Kimball, Scheduling Project Manager, KCG Companies

Investor Confidence Improved 

In an environment where financing partners are watching hard compliance deadlines, KCG’s ability to demonstrate active, data-driven schedule oversight changed the nature of investor conversations on active projects.

“Being able to say that we use SmartPM and show some of its features and outputs had a big calming effect on the number of schedule questions we received from investors on active projects compared to before we implemented it. ”

-Andy Wilson, Chief Administrative Officer, KCG Companies 

The Results

Less Work, Better Schedules   

40-plus hours of manual analysis per week replaced by automated reporting across four active projects.

Schedule quality improved from C/D range to consistent A’s and A-minuses across the active portfolio, with a quality rubric customized to KCG’s standards.

SmartPM metrics tied to annual compensation for superintendents and project managers, driving consistent schedule performance across every project.

Investor schedule questions reduced materially, changing conversations with financing partners from reactive to proactive.

Prado Place delivered within weeks of its original TCO date, the first KCG project run through SmartPM from start to finish.