Job Management Software for Design & Construct

Yes, and it should. On a design and construct project the design phase is real chargeable work with real cost, and treating it as a pre-sales activity is the most common commercial error in the model. Structure the project so design, procurement, workshop and site are separate tasks on the same job. What you gain is the ability to see the design hours as a proportion of the whole, which is the number that determines whether your D&C margin is genuine or is subsidised by the build.

Open the job and record the design time against it from the start. If the project proceeds, those hours belong to it. If it does not, you have a measured figure for what pursuing it cost — and for D&C businesses that figure is usually far larger than anyone assumes, because design-led selling means substantial unpaid work on opportunities that do not convert. A year of recorded pursuit cost changes how selectively you tender.

Keep the job and let it develop with the scope, with the original allowance visible behind it. Scope development in D&C is not a variation in the traditional sense — it is the design converging on something buildable, and it moves in both directions. The commercial risk is specific to the model: because you own the design, growth in scope looks like your problem rather than the client’s, and the only defence is a contemporaneous record of what was agreed and when.

Yes. Design, workshop and site crews all record time against the same project, on their own tasks. In D&C this is more than an accounting convenience, because the handovers between those teams are where the model earns or loses its advantage. A design that the workshop cannot build efficiently is a cost, and it is invisible unless you can see design hours and workshop hours on the same job and compare them across projects.

Give rework its own tasks so it is recorded rather than absorbed. Under D&C you carry the design risk, which means an error that a traditional contractor would claim as a variation is simply your cost. Businesses that do not measure it assume it is small. Measured across a year it is usually the difference between the margin the model promised and the margin it delivered, and it points directly at which part of the design process needs attention.

Yes, as project documents. D&C projects generate a document set that evolves through design development, client approvals and construction issue, and the approved revision carries contractual weight — it is the definition of what you agreed to deliver. Keeping the set attached to the project matters both for building the right thing and for the conversation about whether what was built matches what was approved.

Yes. Purchases raise against the project throughout, from early long-lead items to final site materials. The particular difficulty in D&C is that procurement begins before the design is finished, which means committing money against a scope that is still moving. Keeping every commitment on the project is what lets you see the exposure — how much has been ordered against a design that could still change — which is information worth having before the client requests another revision.

Progress invoicing supports staged claims, which suits D&C contracts where payment typically follows design milestones before construction begins. Watch the shape of the cash curve: design is labour-heavy and paid in small early instalments, while procurement commits large sums shortly afterwards. The interval between those two is where D&C businesses most commonly run into cash difficulty despite the project being profitable.

Yes, if design hours are recorded against their own tasks. This is the comparison the model lives or dies on and the one most rarely made. D&C businesses generally price the design component as a percentage or a round figure derived from habit, and discover only through job data that it has been consistently under-recovered — with the shortfall quietly taken out of the build margin, where it looks like a construction problem.

No. CAD produces the design and construction platforms manage head-contract administration. WorkGuru runs the job: the design hours, the procurement, the workshop, the site labour and the cost. For D&C specifically the value is holding design and delivery in one commercial record, because the entire premise of the model is that those two are connected — and most software stacks keep them in separate systems that never meet.

Yes. Jobs do not all need to look the same. Keep the quick ones simple and add more detail where a bigger job needs it.

Yes. Time can be recorded against the job so you can see what the team actually used.

Yes. Purchases can stay with the job they were for, so the real cost is easier to see.

Yes. Compare what is actually going onto the job with what you originally allowed for while the job is still going.

That is normal in job-based work. Keep the extra hours, parts, materials and changes with the same job.

No. WorkGuru handles the jobs and works alongside your accounting or financial system.