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They are many systems out in the market place that deal with all the different sectors of Construction, but there is not one that links them all together and makes them dependable on each other, automatically issuing instructions to all parties involved in a project. Elevate, an independently developed application, provides a 'dot-to-dot' solution for projects, allowing each sector of a contract to be managed in the correct sequence. This ensures the smooth interaction of a contract and a unified direction for all involved, resulting in large cost savings and stress free projects.

Elevate was conceived and written by Steve McGowan who has spent thirty three years in the industry. Steve has worked at all the different management levels within construction, starting with being a site manager all the way through to being a troubleshooter and consultant to construction companies with regards to their structures and the removal of Risk.

Steve felt that most of the contract problems he encountered were generic, happening in one form or another on most contracts, and that there should be a software package that handled, or better yet eliminated them! He decided that the best way to achieve this was to do it himself.

It has taken a long time, as Steve himself would admit, but with the complexities of linking design, finance and the construction phase together whilst ensuring they comply with contractual law, the system had to be checked and double checked prior to release. Undeterred, and still convinced that Elevate was a valuable tool for the industry, Steve has spent the last seven years honing it to its current, completed state. It should also be stated that Steve has had to fund the development himself, and with 1.5 million lines of code the copyrighted system is very robust. Elevate is also Patent Pending in America and Australia.

Designed principally as a server based application, the system can be used on both computers and handheld devices (tablets, smart phones etc.) and can provide paper based reports, but the intention has always been to be a 'paperless' solution - all team members can log in and see their project status in real-time from any location.

Elevate has no pretensions to interoperability with other applications, although the results could be configured for export to applications like Primavera and other ERP applications. Instead, Elevate is designed as a complete solution for the office and on-site contractor, providing real-time access to every piece of information about individual projects, enabling instant decisions to be made about elements not performing to plan.

Based on a very logical process, a project is divided into individual construction tasks, each with a start and finish date! Each obviously needs a sub-contractor to carry it out, otherwise the work cannot conceivably start, but once appointed a monetary value can be assigned to each task, forming the basis of all financial analysis associated with it and, of course, the whole project.

The software obliges Contract Managers or Project Managers to report regularly on all aspects of the project, but with an automatic weekly report populating 95% of the document, which also allows video clips to be inserted, the reports are simple, concise and very quick to complete. The software gives an accurate and automatic percentage of work completed by each sub-contractor, enabling the current status of the project to be exact.

In addition to providing instant visibility, the onscreen dashboard colour codes each work element. Red denotes tasks that are yet to be started for whatever reason (sub-contractors have not been appointed, for example) with intermediate colours leading up to green, signifying work completed.

Adding the cost for each task gives a value for all work completed on the project, providing a valuable document for keeping financial backers fully informed of a project's financial health. Banks in particular often need 'certitude of drawdown' before they will release working capital.

Managing a contract is not just about keeping a check on finance and progress. There is much more involved, and Elevate includes automatic procedures for many of a contract's other elements. Procurement monitoring, for instance, takes into account the date when materials need to be delivered, and calculates lead-in times for Tender documents to be released and orders to be placed.

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