Business Intelligence for Construction: Project, Portfolio, and Company Dashboards

A GC's BI team builds project dashboards for the monthly WIP review. The first review goes badly because the dashboard's job cost totals don't match the controller's WIP schedule. The differences are the same ones every construction BI program hits: the dashboard doesn't include accrued subcontractor costs for work performed but not yet invoiced, retainage receivable and payable are missing or wrong, approved-but-unbilled change orders aren't reflected in the revenue figures, and the cost-to-complete estimate that drives percentage-of-completion revenue recognition is a manual input the dashboard doesn't have access to. Each of these is a construction accounting adjustment that generic BI developers don't know about. The PM looks at the dashboard, compares it to the controller's spreadsheet, and goes back to the spreadsheet.

Construction BI done right starts with the WIP schedule as the source of truth, not the ERP transaction table. The semantic layer includes accrued costs, retainage positions, change order pipeline, cost-to-complete estimates, and the over/under billing position that drives cash flow. Project dashboards reconcile to the controller's numbers from day one. Portfolio views surface the concentration risk the CFO cares about — too many jobs in one market, one owner, or one delivery method. Company-level dashboards show the metrics bonding companies actually review: work-in-process, backlog quality, gross margin trend by project type. Done with construction accounting discipline, BI earns trust. Done as a generic BI project, it gets bypassed.