A change that starts in the field and ends up on the owner's contract

The problem

The commercial side of a job lived in spreadsheets and email. The cost budget was one workbook, commitments another, change orders a third, and the numbers on them agreed only by coincidence. A change that started as a question in the field got re-entered at every stage: into an RFI, into a pricing sheet, into a subcontract change, and again into the owner's pay application. Every re-entry was a chance to be wrong, and by the time anyone noticed, the money had already moved. Subcontractor compliance was worse: insurance expiries, certified payroll, executed contracts and W-9s tracked on a side spreadsheet that was only current if somebody had updated it that week.

What we built

We built one platform around how a general contractor really works. The cost budget imports from a spreadsheet as a schedule of values broken down by CSI division and cost code, and each line tracks committed cost from subcontracts and purchase orders, actual costs from invoices with retainage held back, approved changes, and what remains. Snapshots let anyone compare this month's position against last month's. The change chain runs end to end: a change event becomes a potential change order, which becomes either a subcontract change order down to a trade or a prime contract change order up to the owner. Each stage carries its own money and status, can split across several cost codes, and links back to where it started. Owner billing generates AIA G702 and G703 pay applications off the contract schedule of values, with retainage, stored materials and a PDF certificate. RFIs track whose court the ball is in, with drawings, formal responses and overdue email reminders that keep going until the item is closed. Alongside that sit submittals, schedule import from MS Project or Excel, daily reports with photos, a punch board, and a document hub with revisions, check-out locks and per-folder access. Subcontractors get a directory rolling up their committed, invoiced and paid position across every job, plus a 27-field compliance tracker per job covering contracts sent, returned and executed, W-9s, insurance certificates and expiries, site safety plans, certified payroll and mobilization dates.

The outcome

The budget page, the register above it, the summary tile and the exported spreadsheet all read from the same calculation, so the screens can't disagree about how much has been committed. A change is entered once and appears on both the subcontract and the owner's contract, still linked back to where it started. Money stops moving by accident: amounts lock once a change order is executed, the schedule of values freezes while a pay application is open, and the original budget can't exceed the contract value. The system itself enforces all of this, rather than just hiding buttons on the screen. Owners, architects and subcontractors work in the system at the depth the contractor chooses, so an owner's representative can answer what they need to without ever seeing the cost budget or the margin inside it. Every change is recorded, and notification emails link straight to the record, so an architect who isn't in the system every day can answer an RFI from their inbox.