Half of Construction Is Accounting — Michael McKeon, Project Manager at Nordby Construction

Hidden Profit Centers in Cost-Plus GMP, Delay Claims, and the Owner's Seat: Ryan Heeth

Liens, delay claims, and the quiet margin levers most contractors leave on the table. In this episode of Finance at the Jobsite, Rishi Srivastava sits down with Ryan Heeth — a construction attorney whose career runs from purchasing agent at Gilbane, to in-house counsel for major New York City builders, to his current seat as Director of Development & Construction at Pratt & Co Capital in the Cayman Islands. Ryan explains why a clean contract is just a risk-allocation document the moment construction starts, and what it actually takes to build a million-dollar extra-cost claim without crossing into a willfully exaggerated lien. He breaks down why liens and claims are two different animals, why you bring in an independent scheduling consultant before accounting prices a delay, and the precise moment an operational problem quietly becomes a legal one. Then he opens up the playbook CFOs and controllers rarely hear out loud: how cost-plus GMP general conditions become hidden profit centers — agreed labor rates, insurance markups, contingency control, shared savings, and change-order markups. He also flips to the owner's seat, watching schedules of values for front-loading on a $100M build, weighing design-build against cost-plus, financing through private credit instead of US-style construction banks, and turning CCIPs into a profit center. Plus the change-order trap that can waive your delay-claim rights before you even know they exist. Chapters: contracts and job-site reality · liens vs. claims · delay claims and critical path · where law meets finance · hidden profit centers in cost-plus GMP · switching to the owner's seat · building in the Cayman Islands · financing, insurance, and career lessons. #FinanceAtTheJobsite #ConstructionFinance #ConstructionLaw #CFO #Controller #ConstructionAccounting #CostPlus #GMP #DelayClaims #ConstructionClaims #Liens #ChangeOrders #ContractNegotiation #ConstructionManagement #GeneralContractor #RealEstateDevelopment #CCIP #ConstructionInsurance #PrivateCredit #ConstructionIndustry #BuildingTheFuture #JobsiteFinance #ConstructionCFO #CaymanIslands #AECindustry

ERP Migrations in Construction: Why They Fail and How to Get Them Right — with Cathy Wendt

Most contractors stay on the same ERP for 10–20 years — and when they finally switch, the technology is rarely the hardest part. The people are. In this episode, Rishi Srivastava sits down with Cathy Wendt, who has spent nearly 30 years helping construction companies select, implement, and migrate accounting systems. Cathy breaks down the entire ERP journey: how to know if you've actually outgrown your system (hint: revenue size isn't the indicator), why QuickBooks falls short for contractors, and what really happens during a migration from systems like Sage 100 Contractor to Acumatica. In this episode: * Warning signs you've outgrown your ERP — and when it's just a training problem * Single-entry vs. double-entry accounting, and why banks and bonding companies care * The leadership mistakes that doom ERP selection before it starts * Realistic migration timelines: from 6-week emergencies to 6-month builds * Data migration pitfalls: dirty vendor records, duplicate entries, and job history * Why cost code structures spark more debate than the chart of accounts * The human side of change: managing experts who suddenly become novices * Cathy's advice for anyone planning a migration in the next two years Connect with Cathy Wendt: syscon-inc.com (newsletter: syson University) #ConstructionFinance #ConstructionAccounting #ERP #ERPMigration #ConstructionTech #ConstructionERP #Sage100Contractor #Acumatica #QuickBooks #JobCosting #CostCodes #ChangeManagement #ConstructionManagement #CFMA #ContractorLife #ConstructionPodcast #FinancePodcast #ConTech

Lawyers on the Jury, $1M Legal Bills, and a Parking Garage Collapse — Brent Zimmerman on How Contractors Win (and Avoid) Disputes

What does it take to go from construction trial lawyer to Chief Legal Officer of a billion-dollar electrical contractor — and what do you learn about construction from inside the courtroom that most executives never see? Brent Zimmerman knows. In this episode of Finance at the Jobsite, Rishi Srivastava sits down with Brent Zimmerman — Chief Legal Officer and Assistant Secretary of Miller Electric Company, Board Certified in Construction Law by The Florida Bar, and a former construction litigator who spent 15 years representing owners, contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, and sureties before going in-house. Brent takes us inside the rooms most people never see: mediations with 20–25 parties and 100+ people in a hotel convention center, a parking garage collapse during a concrete pour that killed a worker and triggered roughly $150M in bodily injury claims and $40M in property damage, and the two trials where he deliberately seated lawyers on the jury — and won both. We get into: – Why contemporaneous documentation is the single biggest factor that decides construction disputes — and why "he said, she said" is a roll of the dice– The first question Brent asks every client: "What's the other side going to say you did wrong?"– Litigators vs. transactional lawyers — and why a litigator sees risk differently– The early warning signs a project is headed to litigation: compounding payment delays and GCs stockpiling change orders for end-of-job horse trading– Brent's economic rule of thumb: don't litigate without at least $1M in dispute — because serious construction trials cost over $1M in fees and experts, and fewer than 5% of cases ever reach trial– Why "money is no object" never survives the second $30–50K monthly legal bill– Why mediation is your last chance to control the outcome — and why the Suits line "going to trial is rolling dice" is the only accurate thing in that show– Elected vs. appointed judges, burden of proof in civil cases, and why 95%+ of construction contracts waive jury trials– AI in construction disputes: faster document review, hallucinated case citations, and why litigation costs aren't coming down– The one habit that keeps contractors out of court: great contemporaneous records — always, not just when things go bad If you're a contractor, CFO, or project executive who'd rather make money than sit in depositions, Brent's playbook — get the work, do the work, get paid, and document everything — is the masterclass. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 👤 ABOUT THE GUEST — Brent Zimmerman is the Chief Legal Officer and Assistant Secretary of Miller Electric Company, a billion-dollar electrical contractor headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, where he oversees all legal affairs — contracts, risk management, bonding and insurance, M&A, compliance, and dispute resolution. Before going in-house, Brent spent 15 years in private practice as a construction litigator, representing owners, developers, contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, and sureties in state and federal courts and arbitration. He is Board Certified in Construction Law by The Florida Bar and AV Preeminent rated by Martindale-Hubbell. 🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentzimmerman [https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentzimmerman]🌐 Miller Electric: https://www.mecojax.com [https://www.mecojax.com] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙️ ABOUT FINANCE AT THE JOBSITE: Finance at the Jobsite is the podcast where construction CFOs, COOs, and operators share the hard-won lessons behind building profitable construction businesses. Hosted by Rishi Srivastava, founder of Beiing Human. 🔔 SUBSCRIBE for new episodes every week👍 LIKE if this episode helped you💬 COMMENT with your biggest takeaway

Half of Construction Is Accounting — Michael McKeon, Project Manager at Nordby Construction

Michael McKeon thought crossing from public accounting into construction operations would be a long, arduous slog. Instead, he discovered something most PMs don't admit out loud: roughly half of running a construction project is accounting. On this episode of Finance at the Jobsite, the Nordby Construction project manager joins Rishi to unpack how thinking in dollars and cents changes the way he runs hospitality and winery builds in Sonoma and Napa County — and why "garbage in, garbage out" on pay apps is the difference between a project that stays on the rails and one that quietly derails. Rishi and Michael dig into where communication actually breaks down between owners, designers, subs, and accounting; what makes a monthly accounting review effective; and the friction in stitching Autodesk Construction Cloud to Sage 300 through HH2. Michael describes his "ghost in the machine" problem with automation — works four times, fails the fifth — and lays out what an ideal low-friction subcontractor pay app process would actually look like if change orders, contracts, and schedules of values were finally talking to each other in real time. He closes with a measured take on AI in construction: he uses it daily, but he's grown more cautious after a few too many design-team emails that read like brick walls. In this episode: * Why an accounting background is a competitive edge for a PM * Where communication breaks down between the field and the back office * What makes a monthly pay app review actually work (and what flags a bad one) * Autodesk, Sage 300, Bluebeam, HH2 — what saves time and what creates friction * The dream of fully integrated change orders and subcontractor pay apps * AI in construction finance: where it helps and where to be careful Subscribe to the Finance at the Jobsite newsletter for more conversations on construction finance, AP automation, and the operators reshaping the back office: https://beiinghuman.com/newsletter-signup/ [https://beiinghuman.com/newsletter-signup/] #ConstructionFinance #FinanceAtTheJobsite #ConstructionAccounting #ProjectManagement #ConstructionPM #PayApps #ChangeOrders #AccountsPayable #APAutomation #ConstructionTech #Autodesk #Sage300 #Bluebeam #HH2 #ConstructionCloud #GeneralContractor #HospitalityConstruction #WineryConstruction #SonomaCounty #NapaCounty #FieldToFinance #ConstructionLeadership #AIinConstruction #BeingHuman #BeiingHuman

WIP Isn't a Math Problem — It's an Alignment Problem | Emanuel Falaguerra

After 30 years implementing construction software, Emanuel Falaguerra has watched 55–75% of projects miss their objectives. The reason isn't the software. It's what's happening before the software. Construction has more tools than ever and somehow still runs on chaos. In this episode of Finance at the Jobsite, Rishi Srivastava sits down with Emanuel Falaguerra — a 20+ year veteran of construction technology — to unpack why so much of the industry's software spend never lands. Emanuel makes a case that almost nobody in construction wants to hear: most software failures aren't software failures. They're process failures, dressed up as a vendor problem. Companies skip the hard work of defining how they actually operate, then expect a feature list to fix it. The result is a 55–75% implementation failure rate that hasn't moved in three decades. The conversation digs into the part of the back office that exposes every one of those gaps — the WIP report. Emanuel calls WIP "an alignment problem, not a math problem," and walks through what a high-functioning WIP process actually looks like: clear ownership, a predictable close cadence, consistent reviewers, and the discipline to focus on the 20–80% window of a job where you can still influence the outcome. Rishi and Emanuel also get into: — Why private-equity-owned construction software vendors stop innovating— The "innocent" way silos start (a PM buying a toolbox-talk app)— Why PMs and accountants live with two different "truths"— What CFOs actually pay for a failed implementation (it isn't license fees)— Why AI is going to amplify whatever process you have — for better or worse— Emanuel's new WIP product, launching next month If you've ever sat in a WIP meeting wondering why the numbers don't tie, this one's for you. Emanuel Falaguerra has spent 30+ years implementing construction accounting and ERP systems, with the last decade focused almost exclusively on WIP. He's currently building a software product designed to fix the WIP gap by enforcing process discipline rather than adding more features. Rishi Srivastava is the host of Finance at the Jobsite and founder of Beiing Human, an AI platform for construction finance teams. Before construction, he was an AI engineer at Bank of America.