Many of the problems being solved today are not the results of new thinking, but rather the result of analyzing enough information to draw meaningful conclusions. The construction industry poses unique challenges with respect to the quantity and quality of information available for analysis. The number of variables which affect project outcomes is very high. While the industry has adopted standards for organizing construction information, those standards have failed to lend sufficient structure to data for the industry to resolve some complex problems. In other words, decision making tools available to trade contractors have not become much better over time.
BidUnity is a system for organizing the information of trade contractors. It is designed to predict a firm's future costs of performance based on recursively analyzing that firm's actual performance. Most construction firms do some type of introspective cost analysis, but because those firms have fewer completed projects to analyze than the number of variables which determine project outcomes, their ability to draw exact conclusions is non-existent.
The problems we want to solve have many dimensions, but they are within reach. Through the application of multivariate statistics to your structured data, BidUnity will reduce the level of risk that your firm accepts when contracting. Furthermore, it is important that these problems are resolved. Unless and until the construction industry finds a more equitable method of distributing project risks, trade contracting firms will continue to accept a disproportionate amount of construction cost risk while being helpless to assign responsibility to others for delay.
Our specific focus is on answering the questions that will enable trade contractors to limit their risks. Most of our research is focused on understanding the influence that variables have on cost and duration, which makes our findings relevant to all tiers of the construction chain. Some of the questions we are researching are discussed below.
We aren't claiming that BidUnity will be able to reduce the number of arguments on this topic, but do expect to substantiate cost differences and time durations associated with alternative construction methods. Differences of opinion surrounding the efficacy of construction methods are difficult to resolve without consideration of the large number of other variables which have an influence on project outcomes. When we have a large number of project outcomes we will be able to support our users' decisions in this area.
This question is sometimes difficult for an individual firm to answer definitively. Certain types of products can be substituted without any tool changes, but where products do require specialized tooling, firms typically pick a product and stick with it. Sticking with a certain approach leads to efficiencies, but it also prevents that firm from exploring cost savings which might be gained otherwise. We realize that making business decisions based on averages alone is not the best approach, but we hope to provide greater insight into the costs associated with approaches that your firm might not have explored.
Providing an estimate for the value of changes to work in progress is a standard requirement; however, the actual cost differences are often uncertain until that work has been completed. How many times has your firm executed a change order only to later discover costs which were not included in the negotiation of its value? We are working toward understanding better approaches to quantifying the risks associated with changes to work in progress. Is the amount of risk associated with changes similar to new projects? If not, then how are the risks different?
It might be very easy to recognize the differences in cost and efficiency between two approaches, but understanding the actual cost of value-added processes requires more than determining who can provide the service at a lower cost. We expect to find examples of value-added processes which add more cost than value, but we recognize that business decisions are based on more than the scope of this problem. Hopefully our findings in this area will help your firm to work with material suppliers where necessary to ensure that value is added as intended.
Every business owner wants to pay employees based on what they're worth, but most are forced to apply subjective methods to determine an employee's wage. Some firms have adopted piece-work strategies, but they often fail to fully and fairly address all the associated risks. More often, however, construction work requires teams of individuals which makes their individual level of contribution difficult to determine in terms of piece-work.
We can, however, capture production rate information through daily reporting. We can then determine the cost and value of the completed work based on the amounts budgeted in the proposal. This ratio of cost versus budget can be used to compare the productivity of different crews across different projects and types of work in consideration of different working conditions. We can gain further insight into the contributions of each individual as they work in different groups over time. BidUnity will provide an objective basis for informing the value of an individual's productivity.
Research on project schedule optimization strategies is ongoing throughout the industry. Construction managers are particularly interested in optimizing schedules because reduced construction time translates to a lower cost of construction, in theory. The difficulty in developing optimized scheduling models is that the underlying production rate information still contains too much variance. This has the unintended consequence of increasing the risks bourn by subcontractors.
Delays which arise from the way that work is scheduled are known to impact trade contractors' costs of performance. From the context of optimizing a schedule, the direct costs of performance, including the costs of expediting, are not relevant. From the context of a construction manager who has contracted for the performance of services at a fixed value, increasing the costs of performance is justifiable when reducing the time to complete.
By studying how working conditions affect production rates in context with other explanatory variables, BidUnity will reduce the risks of trade contractors. Our research in this area may one day provide trade contractors with statistically significant evidence to support claims for an increase in contract value based on unfair scheduling practices.
We want you to utilize BidUnity's machine learning platform for your business because we understand how to use the information that you create in the regular course of business to help you make better decisions. Our mission is to inform the decisions of trade contractors and our best opportunity to do that is by analyzing very large amounts of data across many, many different firms.
This loaded question is beyond of the scope of BidUnity. Even in consideration of several proposals for a specific work item, the market price may be difficult to infer with precision; we reject the idea that the market price is determined by the average value of a set of proposals. Each proposal may be fairly priced with respect to underlying cost predictions, but cost projections can vary for a number of different reasons. Some of those reasons have to do with the specific materials forming the basis of the proposal. Others reasons have to do with uncertainty about production rates. Further complicating the solution, consideration of cost structures of competing firms and regional differences should be taken into account.
Still, exploring methods for predicting the market value of construction services is intriguing, but given the subjective nature of the problem, we think that the least risky approach to estimating the market price is to do it with respect to the cost structures of your own firm. Finding the correct place in the market with respect to the competitive strengths and weaknesses of your firm is within the scope of BidUnity.