EPC Analytics in New York
The quantity surveyor pulls from one system. The project manager pulls from another. Finance pulls from a third. By month-end, nobody agrees on the same earned value number. We fix that.
Project cost reporting in EPC should not take five days to close. If it does, the problem is data architecture, not headcount. US-based clients tend to have higher awareness of modern data stack tooling — Snowflake, dBT, and Databricks are well-understood at the technical level. The challenge is more often the domain knowledge gap: understanding how to apply those tools to the specific operational environment of a manufacturing plant in Dubai or a supply chain network spanning India and Southeast Asia. That's the combination MDI provides.
What we hear from operators
The problems we solve
These aren't hypothetical pain points assembled from industry reports. They're observations from actual plant floors, warehouse ops, and finance desks — written down because they come up in almost every first conversation.
Month-end cost close takes five days and nobody trusts the result
EPC month-end is a ritual. Cost engineers spend the last week of the month reconciling actuals from Oracle or SAP PS against committed costs from the procurement system, against progress claims from the field. It takes five to seven days, involves multiple spreadsheet versions, and ends with a number that the commercial team, the project team, and finance all view with scepticism. The root cause is always the same: three systems with no live connection.
Forecast at completion is a guess, not a calculation
EAC in most EPC projects is produced by a cost engineer who adjusts the original budget based on current burn rate and their knowledge of what's coming. There's no model. There's no systematic connection between schedule progress, resource loading, and cost performance. The forecast is as good as the person making it — and that's not a system you can scale.
Procurement commitments aren't visible to project controls
Purchase orders are raised in the procurement system. Committed costs should flow automatically into the project cost model. In most EPC organisations we work with, they don't — or they flow with a two-week lag after manual reconciliation. Project managers are making schedule and scope decisions without knowing what's already been committed.
How we work
Our approach
01
Connect Oracle, SAP PS, Primavera, and procurement
The integration layer is everything in EPC analytics. We connect the project management system (Primavera P6, MS Project), the cost management system (Oracle, SAP PS, ACONEX if in use), and the procurement system into a unified data model. One record per WBS element with actuals, commitments, earned value, and schedule performance all in one place.
02
Build live earned value and cost performance reporting
CPI and SPI by WBS, by project, by portfolio — updated daily, not monthly. Forecast at completion calculated systematically from the current cost performance index. Commitment register updated automatically as POs are raised. Project managers see their financial position today, not at the end of the month when it's too late to respond.
03
Automate the month-end close and the project board report
Month-end cost close becomes a one-hour exercise instead of a five-day one. The project board report is generated from live data — no manual compilation, no version control issues, no last-minute scramble to reconcile numbers across departments. What used to take a week of cost engineering effort runs automatically overnight.
What changes
Outcomes
These are specific, measurable shifts — not benefit statements. Every outcome listed here has been achieved with a client.
Month-end cost close: 5–7 days → same-day or next morning
When Oracle/SAP PS is connected to procurement and field progress, month-end reconciliation happens automatically against the system of record. Cost engineers stop reconciling and start analysing.
EAC accuracy: manual estimate → model-driven forecast with CPI trending
Forecast at completion is calculated systematically from actual cost performance, not adjusted manually. Variances from the original budget are explained by specific WBS elements, not absorbed into a contingency line.
Commitment visibility: 2-week lag → real-time PO integration
Project managers see committed costs within hours of a purchase order being raised, not after the next reconciliation cycle. Scope decisions are made with full commitment visibility.
Technology stack
Common questions
What buyers ask us
These are questions that come up in almost every first or second conversation. If yours isn't here, it will be in the first call.
We use Primavera for scheduling and Oracle for cost. Can you connect them?
Yes — and this is one of the most common integrations we build for EPC clients. Primavera holds the schedule baseline and progress. Oracle holds the actuals and commitments. Connecting them gives you earned value calculated from real schedule progress against real cost data, updated automatically. The integration typically runs via API or scheduled data extraction, depending on the versions in use.
Our projects span multiple currencies and jurisdictions. How do you handle that?
Multi-currency EPC reporting is something we've built across GCC, India, and UK projects. The data model handles currency conversion at the transaction level, using either fixed project rates or live exchange rates depending on your commercial model. Jurisdiction-level reporting — for VAT in the UAE, GST in India, or tax reporting in the UK — is layered on top of the base model.
How long does it take to get live cost reporting running?
For a single large project with Oracle and Primavera already in place, a first working cost dashboard with actuals, commitments, and EAC typically takes 8–10 weeks. Portfolio-level reporting across multiple projects takes 12–16 weeks depending on how consistent the data structures are across projects. The first milestone — actuals connected and visible without manual extraction — usually happens within four weeks.
Can this work for smaller projects that don't justify a full Primavera implementation?
Smaller EPC operations often run on SAP PS or even structured spreadsheets for scheduling. We've built cost analytics for project portfolios at every scale — from a $10M single-project operation to a multi-billion portfolio across 20+ projects. The architecture scales down; the approach doesn't change.
Ready to move
Start with a conversation, not a proposal
First call is 45 minutes. No deck. We ask about your systems, your team, and your most pressing operational problem. You get a clear view of where the gap is and what closing it looks like. No obligation.