Properly managing insurance and restoration projects requires exceptional communication, organization, negotiation, and scheduling skills. To manage an insurance restoration project successfully, General Contractors need to work closely with the Insurance Carrier, Adjuster, Trade Partners, and/or Vendors to define the project's approved scope and determine an accurate estimated completion date for the overall project. The restoration contracting industry is seemingly time sensitive in which it is imperative to respond to emergencies and complete projects with a sense of urgency and servitude. To ensure compliance and timely completions, many Insurance Carriers and Third-Party Administrators require systematic job updates and scheduling of project milestones to ensure specific key performance indicators are being met and Sub-Trades are being properly scheduled in a timely manner.
Before you can schedule a project, you need to budget that project to ensure the respective Sub-Trades will work within your budgeted scope. PSA is designed with specific features to help you and your team succeed in both budgeting and scheduling.
Budgeting
The Proven Job Management Work Orders Tab is one of the most effective ways that Contractors can systematically budget jobs in terms of estimated revenue, agreed upon cost, and anticipated gross margin percentages per job type. Work orders can either be manually created or imported from an Xactimate or Symbility estimate. A budget is imperative to anticipate the total cost of any given restoration project, whether it is insurance related or a personal remodel. A well bought-out budget often determines how quickly a project can be completed and the level of skill that needs to be hired in order to complete the project with quality and consistency top of mind. Budgets should be thoroughly pre-planned to allow General Contractor’s and their Sub-Trades to be productive, efficient, all while keeping overhead and profit into consideration as well.
Scheduling
Once the budget has been bought-out and is finalized, the next step is to schedule your Sub-Trades. By using Proven Job Management’s Advanced Scheduling tool, this allows Contractors to view each work order in a Gantt Chart view and begin organizing the project with start and end times for each related trade. This tool easily allows for users to enter the scheduled work order duration, expected lag times, and systematically notify the Trade Partner/ Sub-Trade of scheduling expectations. Most importantly, the Advanced Scheduling tool integrates with Contractor Connection Job Track and allows you to sync project milestones from Proven Job Management to the Job Track portal. The Advanced Scheduling feature is a powerful tool that helps you better organize, communicate, and sets you up for success by beginning with the end in mind.
To learn more about work order budgeting, scheduling, or the Contractor Connection Job Track integration and to gain a better understanding of how these features can boost efficiency and productivity for your business, please email sales@canamsys.com.
Written by Taylor Carmichael, PSA's Technical Content Developer