Are You Using Real-Time Data to Control Construction Costs?

Construction budgets are under more pressure than ever. Material prices increasing, labor shortages, and schedule risks make it important for contractors to control costs proactively and accurately. But here’s the catch, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

Too many contractors still rely on lagging indicators—manual timecards, outdated spreadsheets, or weekly reports—to make financial decisions. This creates a dangerous blind spot.

What if a crew falls behind on labor hours today? What happens if someone logs out-of-scope work a week too late? Real-time field data solves these problems by giving operations and finance teams visibility into jobsite performance.

Field Visibility: The Key to Construction Project Cost Control

McKinsey reports that poor communication and delayed reporting contribute to a great majority of construction project cost overruns.

That’s not just a mega project problem, mid-sized and small projects suffer from the same issue—reacting to problems instead of preventing them. The financial impact is real, whether it’s labor overages, missed production targets, or untracked T&M work.

Field data that’s captured and shared in real-time changes the game. It connects what’s happening on the jobsite with your project schedules, forecasts, and billing in the back office. And it helps you prevent cost overruns before they start.

Why Real-Time Field Data Makes a Difference to Control Construction Costs

Access to real-time field data helps contractors stay agile. You can skip waiting for a weekly roundup and avoid crossing your fingers that someone logged hours correctly. Here’s how it helps:

Get Daily Labor Insights: Know exactly how many hours were spent on each cost code, each day..

Track Production Against Budget: Log installed quantities and compare them to planned production rates to spot performance gaps early.

Capture Out-of-Scope Work Instantly: Document T&M work, with signatures and photos, in the field before it becomes a billing dispute.

Accelerate Approvals: When field data is captured in real-time, delays in payroll processing, reporting, and change order approvals disappear.

Rhumbix enables all this through a unified, mobile-first platform that replaces paper processes with structured, real-time reporting.

From the Field to the Office: Connected, Not Complicated

Rhumbix digitizes and integrates key field workflows—including timekeeping, production tracking, and T&M tracking. Project managers and finance teams receive quick answers to important questions. This is possible because the system connects field-collected data to your budgets daily.

• Are we burning labor hours faster than we planned?
• Is this crew hitting production goals—or falling behind?
• Did we capture that change order work from yesterday?
• Will we hit our monthly cost forecast?

These answers drive better financial performance, tighter forecasting, and fewer surprises at the end of the job.

Case Study: Self-Performing GC Gains Cost Control with Rhumbix

One large general contractor struggled with timecard accuracy and payroll efficiency across multiple active jobsites. Paper timecards took a lot of administrative work. They often caused delays and mistakes. This made it hard to track job costs accurately.

By switching to Rhumbix Timekeeping, they digitized their field data workflows and unlocked immediate visibility into labor performance.

Results included:

• Digital timecards are completed in the field with detailed cost code tracking
• Faster payroll processing, saving hours of admin time every week
• Cleaner cost data flows directly into accounting and forecasting systems
• Real-time labor insights to manage productivity and staffing

The GC’s finance and operations teams gained complete visibility into jobsite activity without waiting for paperwork to trickle in. That meant better forecasting, fewer disputes, and tighter control over project costs.

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Real-Time Data = Real-Time Action

Real-time field data doesn’t just inform—it empowers. Here’s what contractors can do when their data flows faster than their change orders:

• Adjust staffing immediately when tasks are over or under-resourced.
• Reallocate the budget based on labor performance and scope changes.
• Approve change orders faster, avoiding revenue leakage.
• Catch non-compliant hours that might expose you to overtime or break violations.

FMI conducted a study that found almost 35% of construction time goes to unproductive tasks. These tasks include searching for information, fixing mistakes, and waiting for decisions. Source

Real-time reporting through Rhumbix helps eliminate those inefficiencies, getting your crews—and your cost controls—back on track.

Finance Teams Get Ahead of Forecasts to Control Construction Costs

Finance leaders at construction firms need more than weekly recaps. They need live data to protect profit margins and adjust projections. With Rhumbix:

• Budget vs. Actuals are updated daily
• Field data flows directly into forecasting models
• Timekeeping and T&M records are audit-ready
• Production rates can be benchmarked over time for stronger estimates

Cost control aligns with the pace of construction demands.

Trusted by Field Leaders, Built for Financial Clarity

Contractors who use Rhumbix aren’t just modernizing field reporting—they’re building a financial edge. From payroll to change orders to production tracking, the platform helps unify field and finance operations unlike our competitors.

Benefits include:

• Streamlined field reporting across multiple workflows
• Complete labor and production visibility by cost code
• Faster billing and reduced revenue leakage
• Better compliance with labor laws and project documentation
• Real-time collaboration between field, office, and client teams

Build Smarter-Faster-Better. With Rhumbix

Every day, your crews are generating cost-impacting data. The question is—can you see it?

With Rhumbix, you can capture and analyze real-time field data. This helps you control project costs, stay on budget, improve forecasting, and boost margins. All is possible when you connect the field to the back office.

Let’s build smarter together.

Request a Demo today!

Explore Rhumbix Timekeeping for Contractors