Concrete’s poured. Invoice is in. Then the month-end report shows the brickwork went R90,000 (about $5,000) over six weeks ago. I’ve sat in that meeting more times than I’d like. siteMargin is the tool I wanted on the table.
Proper cost-control software exists, but it's built for firms with a full-time estimator and a budget to match. For a two-to-ten person outfit, it's overkill — so the job ends up tracked in a spreadsheet that nobody updates until it matters.
siteMargin was built by Leon Mayo, who has spent more than a decade running construction projects in Cape Town. The numbers in it are the ones that warn you: spend ahead of progress, one trade carrying the overrun, claims not yet certified.
It's deliberately narrow. It won't do your accounting, manage your programme, or replace your bookkeeper if you have one. It does one thing: tells you where the money is going wrong, early enough to do something about it.
Leon Mayo
Construction project manager, Cape Town · runs LL Projects · founder of siteMargin
Ten-plus years running jobs for contractors and their clients — the certificates, the retainage arguments, the month-end where the overrun finally shows. siteMargin is the tool I kept wishing was on the table during those conversations, built for the size of outfit that never gets one.