The client has paid £451,313 including VAT, which is £429,822 net, or 61.3% of the contract. The value of the work done is £359,223, or 51.3%, and we have spent £243,464. Cash is ahead of both because this job is paid on a fixed monthly schedule agreed at the outset rather than against what has been valued, so the money arrives on a calendar rather than on progress. That leaves us holding £70,599 more than the job has earned and £186,358 more than it has cost, and there is no retention on this contract, so nothing is held back at the end. The one break in the pattern is August, when £8,312 came in on the 28th against £58,563 due.

Receipts total £451,313.16 including VAT, being £443,001.66 to 20 August on the payment schedule and a further £8,311.50 on 28 August. The contract is £735,818.93 including VAT, which is £700,779.93 net at the 5% rate this job carries. Retention is none, so there is no cash tail after the final payment.

The job is 51.3% complete by value against 49.4% of the expected cost spent, so value is only 1.9 points ahead of cost, down from 4.0 points before the electrical assessment was applied. The bars below are all drawn to the same scale, so their length shows how big each cost group is, and the gold line marks each one’s budget. Three of the four are over budget rather than under. Electrical is £22,370 over and is the whole of the margin gap on this job; HVAC is £6,088 over; plumbing and heating is £360 over, which is nothing on a £81,237 trade. The other lump sum lines carry no movement at all in the model, priced and forecast at the same £195,859, which is itself worth a look given the Oldfield supply inside them is only 23% spent.

The ten days against the other lump sum group are the testing and commissioning allowance, which has not started. Its 38.9% completion comes from the application’s line assessment, not from labour. Electrical is the one trade whose completion is not its own day count: at 46% it sits 7.7 points below the 53.7% its hours give, which is £14,939 of value. The trades used 50.5 days between them in August, electrical 28, plumbing and heating 12 and HVAC 10.5, and spent £20,751.

The job needs 252 more days of labour to finish, of which 174 are electrical, 58 are HVAC, ten are plumbing and heating and ten are the testing and commissioning allowance. The plumbing finishes in September as planned; HVAC and electrical run evenly to December. In August the electricians took 66 days out of their remaining forecast, from 240 down to 174, at the same time as working 28 days on site, which is the single reason the margin recovered this month. Spread across the four months to completion the electrical requirement is 43.5 days a month, a little over two electricians, which is 46% of what the firm can do in that trade in a month. That is comfortable on its own. It is not comfortable alongside Tetley Hall Block E, which needs 40 electrical days in September and 33 in October on its own August report. The two jobs together draw 88% of our electrical capacity in September and 81% in October.

A further ten days sit on the testing and commissioning line, taking the total to 252. Peak capacity is the busiest month’s days set against what the firm can do in that trade in a month, being 94.6 days for plumbing and heating, 94.6 for electrical and 37.8 for HVAC. The even spread across September to December is a placeholder within the agreed completion date, not a programme; the project manager should confirm it.

Share of firm capacity drawn · monthly peak

Cash on this job does not follow the billing. The client pays a fixed instalment of £58,563 including VAT, or £55,775 net, each month to December, agreed at the start and set out in the payment schedule prepared on 20 August. That makes the cash side of the forecast unusually firm: there is no application to argue over, no retention and no cash tail after December, and the last payment lands in the same month the work finishes. The only variable is whether the client pays. August is now £50,252 in arrears, so September carries £103,634 net if the arrears are recovered with the ordinary instalment. Against that, the work still to bill is £341,556 spread evenly across the four months in line with the labour, earning £91,677 of gross profit. All figures in this section are before VAT.

Billing and cost are spread across the four months in proportion to the labour days each month carries, 68 days in September and 58 in each of the others; the monthly split is a guide, the total is firm, and December carries the rounding so the columns add up. Cash is the payment schedule of 20 August at £55,774.71 net a month, with the £47,859 of August arrears added to September. Monthly figures are rounded; totals are exact. All figures before VAT.

Every trade is now forecast to cost more than it was priced at, but the size of the difference is what matters. Electrical accounts for £22,370 of the £28,818 total, which is 78% of the whole gap, and it is the only trade where the movement is material. Its forecast now runs to 375.75 labour days against the 263 it was priced at. HVAC is £6,088 over on a mixture of days and materials, and plumbing and heating is £360 over, which is a rounding difference on that trade. The other lump sum lines show no movement at all, because the model carries the same figure for their priced and forecast cost. Since July the direction is favourable across the board: electrical gained 4.1 points as the remaining days fell from 240 to 174, plumbing and heating gained 7.7 points, and HVAC was flat. Note that the contract values moved as well this month, so the movement since July is directional rather than exact.

Two adjustments are made to the model as supplied. The £700 cost saving on the skips line is carried into the forecast final cost, because the model applies the matching £1,050 charge reduction but leaves the cost out; without it the forecast cost reads £494,044 rather than £493,344. The main line of each trade is shown net of its variations, as the model books all of a trade’s cost against its main line.

Where the £28,818 gap against the price sits

The job was priced to make £236,254 of gross profit at 33.7% on the £700,780 contract. On current costs it is forecast to make £207,436 at 29.6%, which is £28,818 short of the price. Every trade contributes something to that gap, but £22,370 of it is electrical alone. Against July, the position improved by £6,044 of profit and 1.5 points of margin, because the electrical remaining days fell from 240 to 174 and the HVAC final cost came down. The forecast final cost is £493,344 against a priced budget of £464,525, so the job recovers £1.42 for each £1 it spends.

The contract value falls because the balance and variations figure the July report used is superseded by the reconciled £700,780. Costs fall further than the value does, so the profit rises. Each line is shown as the size of the move, with green marking a move in our favour.

Electrical is shown net of the £22,270 of intruder, fire and gate access savings, which the model books against that trade. Other lump sum groups the preliminaries and skips, testing and commissioning, design, the three utilities, the Oldfield Lutron supply, fire, intruder, CCTV, facial recognition and the underfloor heating. Only the skips are charged to the job under preliminaries; the rest of the prelim costs sit in company overheads.

The two trades that carry the job

HVAC and electrical are 53% of the contract between them and hold almost all of the risk left. HVAC is the better of the two, forecast at 44.6% against 48.0% priced, with 58 days and £40,000 of parts still to spend. Electrical is forecast at 29.0% against 40.5% priced, is only 39% spent, and has 174 days left. Plumbing and heating is effectively finished at 93% complete and lands on its price. The other lump sum group has no cost movement in the model at all, which is a modelling choice rather than a finding, and its largest line remains untested.

The job was priced at 504.5 labour days and is now forecast at 653.75, an increase of 149.25 days, of which 112.75 are electrical. At £200 a day that extra labour is worth about £29,850, which is close to the whole £28,818 gap against the price.