Alpharetta, Ga., May 13, 2004: Constructware has unveiled sophisticated "Program Funding" functionality that greatly expands an owner's ability to budget and account for the disposition of funds from multiple sources across multiple projects. "A large number of owners have begun adopting Constructware for their projects and programs," says Scott Unger, president and chief executive. "Several owners identified this as a key point of pain in managing their program financials, so we teamed with them to develop a solution."

The "Program Funding" functionality is contained within the cost management toolset of Constructware. It allows an owner to budget funds from various sources during the initial program planning/budgeting phase, then allocate those funding streams to individual projects as the work is bought out, and then track the disposition of these funds over time at the individual project level.

This is particularly important for public owners who are accountable to external funding agencies—these agencies expect accurate accounting of the disposition of their funds on a large program. An example would be managing and reporting the disposition of funds from local, state, and federal agencies on a large multi-year K-12 school system program. School systems, universities, and many public entities have struggled with this challenge for years.

An example of how Program Funding works: Tracking state funding designated specifically for 'accessibility' and 'life safety' improvements across a large metropolitan school district. With hundreds of schools in a district, the district construction personnel or program manager must determine how much to allocate, or reserve, for each school. As detailed budgeting for each project is completed, the funds are allocated within Constructware to budget line items such as 'Design' and "Construction." When goods and services are procured, the commitments are made from the specifically allocated fund. The owner then has an audit trail of the funding disbursement as well as the project documentation involved in specifying, purchasing and installing the goods and services.

In related functionality, owners can produce various summary reports that cut across multiple projects, or an entire program. For example, a user can produce a monthly snapshot of disbursements across a building program, or a select group of projects and report those disbursements to each funding entity.

Benefit: Significant Productivity and Accountability Improvements "Having one place to track funding sources for each project is a great thing," says Kristi Blandford, accounting analyst with San Juan Unified Schools, Sacramento, Calif. San Juan Unified is the 10th largest school system in California, and has been using Constructware since June 2003 to help manage its $350 million, multi-year building program.

San Juan began implementing the Program Funding functionality earlier this year. Before implementing Program Funding Blandford says she had to "pour over hundreds of sheets of paper" and input funding data in various spreadsheets to track funds at the project level. "Sorting the data and preparing reports was very time consuming," she says. "Being able to see the status of your funding sources at the touch of a button is fantastic."

Another key feature of Program Funding, says Blandford, is that "it actually stops you from making a transaction if you are over that budget amount." For example, if a project has been budgeted to receive a fixed amount from funding source "A" and a user exceeds that amount, the application prevents the transaction from being "saved" and a popup advises the user of the situation. The budget amount can be adjusted, but only after appropriate review and approval. "This is a great tool for tracking our overall budget and making sure our expenditures stay within our budget," says Blandford.

Most accounting systems are not able to address this type of need, because more than financial data is needed to get the job done—disposition of funds needs to be related to real-time project documentation such as change orders, correspondence, meeting minutes, bid results, pay applications, etc.

Constructware's Development Approach Allows Fast Response to the Need The development and deployment of Program Funding in a relatively short period of time illustrates one advantage of Constructware's centralized, hosted business model.

Constructware was able to provide this hybrid functionality due to its centralized database approach, where job costing/cost management functionality is in the same database as project documentation; and the unique ability of Constructware to tie together all project team members in a single collaboration/communication platform. The latter is key, so that data can be input and made available in real time to all authorized users, regardless of whether they are contractors, A/Es, the owner, the program manager, consultants or specialty contractors.

And unlike client/server based computing, where versions of an application are loaded on individual PCs or corporate network servers accessed by multiple users, all of Constructware's thousands of user companies access the same application at Constructware's hosted, highly secure data center using a standard web browser. (This is not unlike 1970s-era mainframe computers where specialists centrally maintained the software and hardware. With Constructware, the Internet is the access mechanism for the application.) This allows new functionality to be developed and tested over a period of months, previewed by users on separate test sites, then rolled out to all users immediately without user companies having to distribute or install the software. Constructware has unveiled hundreds of feature upgrades and enhancements in this manner in recent years.

About Constructware Constructware is a hosted communication and collaboration solution that increases productivity and improves processes and accountability for all stakeholders throughout the design, construction and facility lifecycle. Our clients use Constructware software and services to optimize, standardize and automate their business processes with an easy to use, scaleable solution. More information available at http://www.constructware.com.