Construction losses simulator
Estimate how much money leaks out every month through the two silent drains of every construction firm: the hours your site manager or owner spends building reports by hand, and the overruns from operating on outdated information (over-purchasing, rework, lost instructions). These leaks never show up on a bank statement, but they come straight out of your margin.
With the automatic daily close-out, reporting drops from 45 to 5 minutes, and about half of the chaos is recovered by operating on live inventory, drawings and progress.
The percentages are conservative references — adjust them to your reality. The goal is to size the leak, not to give you an accounting figure.
How it’s calculated
| Line item | Budget | Spent | Progress | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Concrete and foundation | $612,000 | $598,000 | On track | |
| Steel structure | $486,000 | $502,000 | Over budget | |
| MEP systems | $398,000 | $240,000 | In progress | |
| Masonry | $354,000 | $160,000 | In progress | |
| Finishes | $520,000 | $70,000 | In progress |
Frequently asked questions
Where does the reporting cost come from?
From time: building the daily report of one project by hand —photos, progress, headcount, spend— takes around 45 minutes. Multiplied by the hourly cost of a site manager or the owner and by 26 days a month, each project burns dozens of billable hours per month just gathering information.
What is the chaos percentage?
The sum of the leaks caused by operating on stale information: buying material that was already in the warehouse, rework from outdated drawings or instructions, and progress payments made without validating the evidence. In practice it runs between 2% and 5% of the project’s monthly spend; the simulator starts at a conservative 3%.
How do I reduce this loss?
With two levers: have the report build itself from what was already captured during the day (site log, attendance, receipts, photos), and make decisions on live data —real inventory, current drawings, progress validated with evidence. That is exactly what Matterial does: the daily close-out drops from 45 to 5 minutes and spend reads against budget in real time.