Forecasting is a feature that must be enabled by tech support in order to be utilized in the user interface; for assistance, please contact your e-Builder account manager.
Forecasting helps users plan for and anticipate possible conditions that may affect the project budget. Being able to plan for anticipated costs allows you to gage more accurate over/under budget projections for your projects. As time progresses on the project, you can use the forecast to take into consideration professional estimations by the project manager to reflect real life circumstances. The forecast can then be adjusted for each budget line item as appropriate, which will automatically affect the estimate at completion and forecasted over/under (variance) calculations.
Why Forecast?
Forecasting is really the core of any business plan because you must identify your destination before you can figure out the best path. A forecast is not 100% accurate, but accurate enough to identify possible risks. The earlier you know about a possible risk the better off you are in eliminating it.
In the world of construction, forecasting is a key ingredient to meeting or beating your budgets. By instituting a disciplined forecasting process you can communicate the anticipated cost of the project (and program) with much greater certainty. That process involves putting together carefully reasoned assumptions based on professional estimates, logs (like potential change order log, RFI log, issue log, etc.) and IT, furniture and equipment lists (to name a few) quantified in a systematic way to make your projections as accurate as humanly possible. Some of this information will be contained in various logs in your e-Builder reports, forms and documents.
Often people refer to forecasting as a mysterious process, as no one can predict the future. However, it is possible to make reasonable predictions or assumptions on how events will turn out based on the logical assessment of the facts presented to you and the e-Builder Forecast toolset allows you to do this. The more practice and experience gained from forecasts, the easier and more beneficial forecasting becomes.
More information about facilitating the forecasting process is available in the user assistance help guide; see Forecasting for more information.
The following topics are included in this section: