Civil engineering and heavy construction contracting is a business that runs on
margin, thin margin, hard-won margin, margin that can disappear entirely between
the price you submitted and the final account you settle. The subcontractor who
claims more than the scope justifies. The plant that sits idle for four days
because the rebar wasn't on site when the pour was scheduled. The variation
that was verbally instructed on site, executed by the crew, and never formally
priced before the client decided it was included in the original rate. The
estimator whose productivity assumptions were reasonable in January but
are being challenged by ground conditions that nobody anticipated in the
tender document. These are not exceptional events. They are the ordinary
texture of heavy construction, and they are the reason that contractors
who win work at acceptable margins routinely finish projects below them.
QBaticEPM3 is the platform built for the contractor who intends to finish
every project at or above the margin it was priced at. It connects the
estimating discipline that wins the right work at the right price, the
construction execution intelligence that captures cost at the point it
is incurred, and the commercial management capability that controls
variations, sub-contractor claims, and client certifications in real
time, so that the gap between the priced tender and the final account
is a managed number, not a discovered one.
The estimate that wins the contract, the daily cost capture that protects the margin, and the commercial management that settles the final account, all connected in one environment that every member of the project team works from every day.
Request a DemoEstimating & Tendering
Detailed cost builds from a company-specific component library, labour, plant, materials, subcontractor rates, and preliminaries, structured to produce a defensible, competitive tender every time.
Construction Execution
Daily cost capture, plant and gang productivity tracking, subcontractor management, and live cost-to-complete updated against the approved budget every single day on site.
Commercial Management
Variation order control, interim payment application preparation, subcontractor account management, and final account settlement, all governed within the same project environment as the original estimate.
Win the Right Work.
Protect the Margin. Deliver the Programme.
Three integrated capabilities that close the gap between the margin priced in the estimating office and the margin banked at final account, because in heavy construction, that gap is where company profitability lives or dies.
Competitive, Defensible Cost Builds
Every tender is built from the contractor's own company resource library, labour gang compositions and productivity rates calibrated to the type of work and the region, plant hourly costs updated to current market rates, material prices from current supplier agreements, and subcontractor packages priced against known trade rates. Preliminaries, attendance, time-related costs, and overheads are structured into the estimate so that the tender sum reflects the true cost of delivery, not an optimistic assumption that the site team will somehow make the numbers work. When a tender is won, the estimate does not sit in a folder. It becomes the project budget that the site team is held accountable to from day one.
Daily Cost Capture at the Point of Incidence
Site foremen and plant supervisors capture daily labour allocations, plant utilisation, material deliveries, and subcontractor attendance directly in QBaticEPM3, on site, on the day, against the specific work activity and cost code they relate to. There is no end-of-month reconciliation exercise. There is no site manager estimating what happened last week. The cost-to-date is current to the last entry, the productivity achieved against the productivity assumed is visible in real time, and the cost-to-complete is recalculated every day from actual performance data, not from the assumption that the remaining work will somehow perform better than the work already done.
Variation Control & Account Management
Variations are the most reliable source of margin erosion in heavy construction, not because they are inherently unprofitable, but because they are routinely executed before they are priced, priced after the fact under time pressure, and then disputed by clients who have no record of having instructed them. QBaticEPM3 enforces the discipline of pricing every variation before work commences, issuing a formal variation order with the instructing authority's reference, and updating the contract value and cost-to-complete simultaneously. Payment applications are generated from measured quantities and approved variation orders. Final accounts are settled from a complete, auditable project record, not from a negotiation over who remembers what was agreed on site fourteen months ago.
Earthworks & Bulk Excavation
Concrete & Structures
Plant & Specialist Works
QBaticEPM3 Gives the Contractor Visibility, Control, and Commercial Authority on Every Project.
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01
Estimating Library That Learns With Every Project
The company resource library in QBaticEPM3 is not a static price list, it is a living knowledge base that is updated after every project with the actual productivity rates achieved, the actual material costs incurred, and the actual plant utilisation recorded on site. When the next similar tender is prepared, the estimator is not guessing at how long it takes the drilling rig to advance through weathered granite in the region. The system already knows, because three previous projects in similar conditions captured that data. Each tender prepared from an updated library is more accurate than the last. Each project that uses the library strengthens it for every project that follows.
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02
Plant & EquiEPMnt Productivity Tracking
Heavy plant is the largest single cost item on most civil engineering projects, and it is also the cost that most frequently exceeds its budget without anyone noticing until the end of month report. In QBaticEPM3, plant hours are allocated daily against the work activity they produced. Productivity, cubic metres moved per excavator hour, linear metres drilled per rig shift, concrete poured per pump per day, is tracked against the rate assumed in the estimate. When a plant unit is underperforming against its budget productivity, the site manager sees it the next morning and can intervene, change the work method, mobilise a second unit, or raise a variation if the cause is a client instruction, before the underperformance has accumulated into an unrecoverable budget overrun.
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03
Subcontractor Package Management & Payment Control
Specialist subcontractors, piling, dewatering, formwork, reinforcing, waterproofing, geotechnical instrumentation, carry their own scope, their own programme, and their own payment applications that arrive at the contractor's commercial office regardless of whether the main contract payment has been certified. QBaticEPM3 manages every subcontractor package against the back-to-back scope and rate agreed at award, tracking their progress on site, assessing their payment claims against measured quantities, and flagging any claim that exceeds the approved scope before it is certified and paid. Pay-when-paid provisions are managed from the same system, ensuring the contractor's cash flow is never extended by subcontractor claims that the main contract has not yet recovered.
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04
Programme Acceleration & Delay Analysis
Civil engineering projects are delayed by weather, by ground conditions, by client design changes, by material supply failures, and by the simple reality that some activities take longer than they were estimated to take. QBaticEPM3 tracks actual progress against the baseline programme every day, identifies the critical path activities under pressure, and calculates the cost and time impact of delay events as they occur. Where the delay is the client's risk, a late design issue, an instruction to work around an unforeseen obstruction, a restricted access period, the variation is raised immediately with the supporting programme analysis attached. The extension of time claim does not have to be assembled from memory at the end of the project. It has been building itself in the system since the delay event was first recorded.
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05
Multi-Project Portfolio Visibility
Large civil engineering contractors do not run one project, they run a portfolio of projects simultaneously, each with its own site team, its own programme, and its own cost performance. A project that is quietly eroding margin in the fourth month is not always visible to the senior management team until the damage is done. In QBaticEPM3, the managing director and the commercial director see the live cost performance of every active project on a single dashboard, budgeted versus actual cost to date, forecast cost to complete, contract value versus certified value, and cash flow position. Projects that are underperforming are visible the moment they start to diverge from budget, not at the quarterly business review when the options for recovery have already narrowed.
Better Tenders. Protected Margins. Projects That Finish as Priced.
Civil engineering contracting is a knowledge business as much as a construction business. The contractor who knows what their gang genuinely produces in a day in that ground type, what their concrete pump actually costs per cubic metre including downtime and mobilisation, and what the true all-in cost of a delayed possession claim settlement looks like, that contractor prices more accurately, manages more effectively, and defends their position more successfully than the competitor who is still working from last year's schedule of rates and a site manager's verbal update.
QBaticEPM3 builds that knowledge systematically with every project the company executes. The estimating library grows richer after every final account. The productivity benchmarks become more precise after every daily allocation cycle. The commercial processes that protect variations, manage subcontractors, and settle final accounts become faster and more defensible because they are supported by a complete, unambiguous project record, not a collection of emails, site meeting minutes, and a project manager's recollection.
See the Platform in Action
Priced to Win.
Managed to Finish at the Margin.
Ready to close the gap between
the estimate and the final account?
Let QBaticEPM3 connect your estimating library, your site cost capture, and your commercial management, so every project you win is managed with the same discipline and intelligence that it was priced with.