Performance metrics deliver enhanced oversight and insights for general contractors.

By

Blake Johnson

and Kacie Goff

Last Updated Apr 2, 2026

By

Blake Johnson

and Kacie Goff

Even small general contracting firms have the dual challenge of managing tight profit margins and a myriad of moving parts. As the general contractor (GC) grows, the challenges here often do, too. It’s no surprise, then, that in their effort to stay profitable and grow, GCs want to find ways to improve their performance across projects.

Technology can help here. Tech tools make it easier to capture data about project performance, then organize it to improve oversight and deliver insights. At least, that’s the idea. In reality, though, a lot of GCs still struggle to make sense of scattered data and lagging indicators. 

So, what’s the issue? In many cases, it’s a lack of data organization.

Data dispersal: GCs' big problem with project oversight

For the longest time, GC firms have had information flying all over the place. Some data lived in filing cabinets, others in local drives on people’s personal devices. More info was still simply found in people’s heads. The superintendent probably knew a lot about a project’s status, but that might not have been accessible to others without a call, email, or visit to the jobsite. 

Data was often siloed by project, too. And to compound all of this, GCs have often lived with lagging indicators. They might not really know how the budget shook out until the warranty period is complete, for example. 

All told, GCs had mountains of data, but it lived in different formats and places. That made it difficult to track performance on individual projects, let alone zoom out for insights and trend identification. Learning from mistakes and repeating wins gets harder when you can’t see the full picture, though. Leaders within the company then have less to pull from when making decisions, and are consequently more likely to take on risk. 

Technology has promised to change things by helping GCs measure success. With a tech platform to serve as a central repository for the contracting firm’s data, seeing what’s happening where should theoretically get much easier. If the GC identifies key performance indicators (KPIs) to track, the technology can enable that. 

The key here is the technology’s function as a centralized place where all the data about project performance can live. 

Without having a place for all that data to be stored in a uniform fashion, you'll never get to a spot where you can accurately monitor KPIs.

Blake Johnson

Manager, Strategic Product Consultants, General Contractors

Procore Technologies

A closer look: Examples of how data spread affects GCs

Offering up some familiar examples can help construction professionals better understand the value of performance metric trackability. 

Let’s say a firm has two high-end community centers underway at the same time. A specialty contractor gets hired for both and arrives at one project first. That contractor performs subpar work. Performance data is siloed to that project, though, so news never reaches the other jobsite. The specialty contractor arrives to the second project and performs similarly substandard work. 

Because data was dispersed, both projects suffered. Had performance tracking been in place, the issue likely would have been caught — and, ideally, corrected — before the subcontractor could get to the second community center.

The opposite side of the coin further underscores how data consolidation helps GCs. Historically, safety monitoring was the work of a select few individuals. Data was dispersed across those individuals and their own storage systems.

Because safety is such a pressing issue, though, some GCs have worked to centralize safety data. With a repository for safety observations and incidents, patterns emerge. Teams on one jobsite can learn from what happens on another. By tracking and displaying safety data, the company can bring the whole team into creating a safety culture. 

Performance metrics to track (and their benefits)

Centralizing data about project performance is the first step here. But the next one is just important: GCs need to review and analyze that data. 

Identifying KPIs and benchmarking them make it easier to keep projects on rails and identify when they’re deviating. The faster those variances are identified, the easier they generally are to correct. 

The performance metrics the firm should track depend on the types of projects it runs, its growth goals, and more. To get the wheels turning, though, some specific KPIs that might be helpful include the following.

Planned vs. actual

At the outset of a project, GCs have usually budgeted for it. Monitoring what was planned against what’s actually been used so far helps them keep a finger on the pulse of the project.  

Most GCs benefit from looking at two specific categories for planned vs. actual analysis:

• Hours
• Costs

If the team knows the project is only about halfway complete but has used up 75% of its allocated hours, for example, it can signal them to jump in and start troubleshooting. 

Response times

At first glance, response times might seem relatively minor. Actually, though, this is a common area where projects fall behind schedule. 

General contractors benefit from tracking the response times for:

• Submittals
• Requests for information (RFIs)
• Change orders

Tracking response times helps illuminate recurring lag and the reason behind it, whether it’s individual stakeholders who are always slow to respond or insufficient information transmitted in the initial RFI/submittal/change order. This way, the GC can correct for these things. 

This performance metric tracking also protects the GC. If a project falls behind because of slow responses from an external stakeholder regarding something on the critical path, having the data clearly shows the client who’s at fault. If the client is themselves responsible for the lag, this can help to speed their responsiveness moving forward.  

Safety observations

Tracking safety observations tells the GC a lot about what’s actually happening on its jobsites. Segmenting that data by project and contractor helps the GC spot trends. It might learn that one of its specialty contractors regularly introduces added risk and decide to stop using them, for example. 

Keeping jobsites safer protects lives, and it helps GC firms avoid the delays and added costs that come with safety incidents. 

Project quality

It could be argued that project quality is somewhat nebulous, but implementing KPIs to measure quality helps the GC monitor and control it. Some options here include tracking:

Change Orders by Reason

Monitoring the reasons behind change orders consolidates information about why a project isn’t going to plan. Even if the reason is outside of the GC’s control — like the client changing their minds — knowing what’s driving the change is helpful. The GC can use that data to make informed decisions about the project moving forward. Similarly, they can determine whether or not they want to work with that client/design firm/subcontractor/vendor again.

Plus, when the reasons for the change order are something the GC can change, having that information helps them act fast. They no longer need to wait for a team member to notice a pattern on their own and flag it. 

Issue Reporting

To drive their project performance KPIs, contracting firms might develop a way to capture issues. Something like a digital form allows team members walking the jobsite to flag problems (e.g., scuffed walls, bent door frames) as they see them. 

Better yet, with centralized issue reporting, the GC can track outstanding issues and their response times. If deficiencies are still unaddressed after a certain amount of time, the GC can re-flag them with the responsible party. 

Punch list items

The length of the punch list says a lot about the quality on that particular project. If the punch list is 20% longer than most of the GC’s projects, for example, it alerts them to a quality issue. They can then determine what happened. 

Stay updated on what’s happening in construction.

Subscribe to Blueprint, Procore’s free construction newsletter, to get content from industry experts delivered straight to your inbox.

Subscribe

4 steps to implement performance metric tracking

General contracting firms are probably already tracking project performance metrics in some shape or form. Centralizing where they’re captured and making it easier to analyze that data helps them be more proactive and make more informed decisions. 

To accomplish that, firms can apply the following four steps:

• Define their KPIs for projects.

  What’s most important to help the firm succeed?

• Centralize data.

  igure out a way to capture, store, and analyze the relevant data in a centralized location. Speaking with peers might bring good-fit options to light. 

• Create SOPs for data.

  Create standard operating procedures (SOPs) for how that data will be entered and interpreted. Building in uniformity helps the technology the GC is using work the way it should. 

• Analyze the data to track the identified KPIs.

  Many construction software solutions have built-in insights or reporting tools, but those usually need to be finessed to deliver the most valuable information to the GC in the most digestible format. 

In each step, it’s important to bring the people who will actually be using the technology and tracking project performance into the process. Involve rank-and-file team members along with the C-suite.

Moving from reactivity to proactivity

Some contracting firms might be motivated to figure out better metric reporting because they’re coming up against the same problem again and again.

Others might know their competitors are doing it and want to keep pace. They might need to meet owner requirements or want to attract younger tech-native talent.

Whatever the reason, there’s never a bad time to get into improving project performance reporting. 

Once KPIs are established and tracked, and the resulting data is analyzed, GCs can better move from being reactive to proactive. Segmenting data by time period, contractor, project, or other parameters lets them drill down and see what’s working — and what isn’t.

In this way, performance metrics can finally deliver enhanced oversight and insights for general contractors.

Written by

Blake Johnson

Manager, Strategic Product Consultants, General Contractors | Procore Technologies

Blake Johnson is a Manager of Strategic Product Consultants at Procore, with a focus on General Contractors. Previously, he worked in Austin, Texas as a Project Manager for Fazzone Construction Company and Slater Painting Company, and as Assistant Project Manager for Journeyman Construction. He has experience in scheduling, estimating, job costing, supplier negotiation, and supervision of project teams. He lives in Vancouver.

View profile

Kacie Goff

Contributing Writer | Procore Technologies

95 articles

Kacie Goff is a construction writer who grew up in a construction family — her dad owned a concrete company. Over the last decade, she’s blended that experience with her writing expertise to create content for the Construction Progress Coalition, Newsweek, CNET, and others. She founded and runs her own agency, Jot Content, from her home in Ventura, California.

View profile