Cost control for main contractors

See the cost problem
while you can still fix it.

Ibeks turns timesheets, dockets, purchase orders and site diaries into a live forecast of where every project — and your whole portfolio — will land. Catch cost movement weeks before the month-end pack.

Ibeks — Executive portfolio view
Ibeks executive dashboard showing live portfolio margin, cash position and business-unit drill-down
The squeeze

Overruns aren’t the exception. They’re the average.

21% · A$34b
How far Australian transport infrastructure ran over its promised cost across two decades — and 80% of it came from just 14% of projects.
~5%
The typical Australian builder’s net margin. One bad project can erase the profit of several good ones.
~6.4%
Of contract value lost to rework on Australian projects.

Sources: Grattan Institute; Master Builders Australia; Love & Edwards, Curtin University.

The industry doesn’t lose money because the work is hard. It loses money because the numbers arrive too late to act on. By the time a month-end pack shows the overrun, the cost is already committed. Ibeks closes that gap.

The platform

From site activity to final cost — live.

One platform that runs the whole loop: capture cost at source, forecast the landing, control the spend, and give every role its own view.

01 · Capture

Cost at source

Voice diaries, crew timesheets, dockets and POs become structured cost the moment they happen — no re-keying.

02 · Forecast

The landing, not the history

A live estimate-at-completion on every cost code, rolled to area, project and portfolio — with an early-warning Movement signal.

03 · Control

Before it’s committed

Value gates matched to your delegations of authority, enforced by the system, with a full audit trail of who signed what, when.

04 · See

A view for every role

Role-based dashboards, an executive view built around margin and cash, and a portal that brings subcontractors into the loop.

Forecast

Forecast the landing, not the history.

Budget, Committed, Actual and estimate-at-completion on every cost code, always current. You see the trend at month 2 — not in the month‑8 pack.

  • Movement signal flags the project that’s turning, this month vs last
  • Risk & opportunity baked into a risk-adjusted forecast
  • Full cost-to-complete worksheets for the QS, one click for everyone else
You always know where the job will land.
Cost code control
Cost-code control screen with live EAC, variance and movement on every cost code
Capture

Capture cost at source. Kill the data lag.

A supervisor speaks their site diary; an engineer confirms it into structured progress the same day. Crew timesheets run one sheet per crew per day — the way foremen already record labour.

  • Crew timesheets with a grade, override and overtime rate engine
  • PO line items allocated across cost codes, validated to 100%
  • Dockets, general costs and progress captured as they happen
The number is right because it came straight from the person who did the work.
Crew timesheet
Crew timesheet capture with rates, overtime and cost-code allocation
Control

The money can’t move until the right person says yes.

A visual workflow engine with value gates matched to your delegations of authority — enforced by the system, not by habit. Every approval lands in one My Tasks queue.

  • Delegation matrix and enforced approval paths
  • Variations flow into budget and forecast without double counting
  • Retention tracking, PO close-out, and a complete audit log
The system can prove who signed what, when.
My Tasks — approvals
My Tasks approval queue with dockets, invoices and forecast packages awaiting response
See

Everyone sees their job — from the board to the subbie.

Role-based dashboards with a drag-and-drop widget builder. The board sees margin and cash; the QS sees their cost codes; the subcontractor sees only theirs, in their own scoped portal.

  • Executive view scoped to the two questions leadership asks: margin and cash
  • Click any number and drill to the evidence behind it — POs, invoices, dockets, timesheets
  • Subcontractor portal with scoped team management
Click a number, see what it’s made of.
Subcontractor portal
Subcontractor portal showing scoped dockets, claims and invoice status
Who it’s for

Built for the whole commercial chain.

Finance Director

Live portfolio forecast and margin — the bad news arrives while it’s still fixable.

Commercial Manager / QS

The forecast builds itself from site data. Your time goes on decisions, not consolidation.

Operations Director

Movement flags the project that’s turning weeks before it shows in the month-end pack.

Procurement

Nothing gets committed until the right person signs — and the record proves it.

Site / Project Manager

Speak your diary; an engineer confirms it into structured cost the same day.

The numbers

Ibeks targets a 0.5–2% reduction in delivered project cost — which on typical margins is roughly 10–38% more project profit, plus a one-off cash-flow gain from collecting retention when it falls due.

Why so much leverage
At a ~5% margin, cost is ~95% of revenue. So 1% off delivered cost ≈ 19% more project profit.

Illustrative, at a 5% net margin: on a A$50m project, 0.5–2% of delivered cost is roughly A$238k–A$950k. We don’t promise a fixed number — savings depend on adoption and acting early. Run your own portfolio through the calculator.

Run your numbers
Reduction in delivered costUplift in project profit*
0.5%~10% more profit
1.0%~19% more profit
2.0%~38% more profit

*At a typical ~5% net margin. All figures AUD. All published figures sit inside the 0.5–2% band — we never quote above it.

Our posture

What we won’t promise.

Ibeks protects the margin inside your contract value by making the cost problem visible earlier. That claim is worth more when you know what we won’t say.

No guaranteed percentage

Savings depend on adoption and on acting early. We publish a target band — 0.5–2% off delivered cost — and hand you the model to run your own numbers.

No invented case studies

Anything unproven is labelled illustrative. The market statistics we do quote are sourced — Grattan Institute, Master Builders Australia, Curtin University.

No revenue promises

We don’t claim to win you work or change your contract value. Ibeks catches cost movement earlier — it protects the thin slice of margin inside the jobs you already have.

How you start

One project. Live forecast within weeks.

No rip-and-replace. Ibeks runs alongside what you already have and replaces the spreadsheet-and-month-end-pack cycle — not your systems.

Step 1

Import your cost codes

We bring in your existing cost-code structure as-is. Your language, your breakdown — nothing to relearn.

Step 2

Switch on capture

Timesheets, dockets, POs and diaries your site teams already produce start flowing in as structured cost.

Step 3

Watch the forecast go live

The aim is a live outturn forecast on your pilot project within weeks — then roll out at your own pace.

Base platform launches August 2026 — pilot onboarding is open now.
Roadmap

Where it goes next.

The roadmap builds on structured, sourced cost data — so when the AI arrives, it has real numbers to work with. None of these are live today, and we won’t pretend otherwise.

Q4 2026

Integrations & mobile

Xero / MYOB integration, mobile capture, and an email inbox for dockets and invoices.

Q4 2026

Voice to cost & auto-narrative

Speak the site diary and AI files structured progress to the right cost code; reports write their own “what changed and why”, with anomaly flags on unusual spend.

2027

Ask your portfolio

Plain-language questions — “why is this project over?” — answered from live data, with the drivers behind every number.

2027

Predictive outturn

AI predicts where each job will land and flags the ones turning before the numbers move.

Roadmap items are planned capabilities, not current features. Timing may change.

Made for here

Built in Australia, for Australian construction.

Designed around the way Australian sites and commercial teams actually work — delegations of authority, retention, subcontractor claims — with every figure in AUD. A secure cloud service, accessible anywhere, with a full audit trail from day one.

Map of Australia
Contact

Worth 15 minutes?

Tell us a little about your portfolio and we’ll come back with a walkthrough built around a project like yours — and the savings model so you can run your own numbers.

Prefer to start alone? Run your numbers in the calculator or request access to the platform.

This goes straight to hello@ibeks.com.au. No newsletters, no spam.