Insights Pilot Questions

What is the Procore Insights pilot?

The Procore Insights pilot brings key insights to our users in the tools where they are most visible and relevant including key financial and RFI insights in Account Home, Project Home, and tool pages. Data presented to the user are based on a company’s historical performance, enabling them to learn from past projects. In the future, we envision delivering many types of insights in this way.

How are Procore Insights different from Procore Reports or Procore Analytics?

Procore Insights live in Account Home, Project Home, and in tool pages, rather than separately in Procore Reports or Procore Analytics. This allows customers to take corrective action sooner based on insights and risk levels. Procore Insights also includes enriched data and AI-enabled insights that are not available in Procore Reports or Procore Analytics. In the future, we envision this type of data to be shared across tools, but for this pilot this information will only be available in Procore Insights.

What types of insights and tools are supported in the pilot?

The pilot shows two types of insights: general conditions spend insights and RFI insights. 

General conditions risk insights are shown to eligible customers with Financial Management tools enabled. Users will be able to see how their actual and forecast general conditions spend compares to benchmarked spend of their previous similar projects. If companies don’t have enough completed projects to show a benchmark, users just see their actual spend chart.

RFI insights are shown to eligible customers with sufficient use of the RFI tool. Users will be able to see the topics and categories of their RFIs so that they can understand what RFIs are most likely to occur in the future on similar projects and/or with the same assignee companies.

Based on eligibility criteria, customers may see both general conditions and RFI insights, one or the other, or neither.

How do I get started with the Procore Insights pilot?

See Getting Started with the Procore Insights Pilot for information on opting in the pilot. Company administrator permissions are required.

How does a Procore customer opt in to the pilot?

A user with company administrator permissions at an eligible company will see a card on the Account Home inviting them to opt in. Once they click ‘Join the pilot’ a modal displays asking them to agree to the participation agreement. They are also asked if they want to allow project administrators to see general conditions insights on their projects or not. Once opted in, insights are available on all eligible projects at the company.

Who can access the pilot after opting in?

Once a company administrator opts in, all company administrators at their company can see the pilot. During the opt-in process, the company administrator can elect to allow for project administrators at their company to also see the pilot. Permitted project administrators will see the pilot only on projects that they have access to. Project admin users will not have access to portfolio level insights shown on account home, even when given access to project level insights.

What geographic regions can access the pilot?

The pilot is only available to general contractors and owners (RFI insights only) in the US at this time.

How is the general conditions risk level determined?

Our risk calculator uses historical data from your similar projects to forecast¹ your potential to overspend on your general condition funds. 

• High risk indicates your forecasted spend is greater than your approved budget.
• Medium risk indicates your forecasted spend is 95-100% of your approved budget.
• Low risk indicates your forecasted spend is 95% or less of your approved budget.

(1) Any forecasts or other insights provided by Procore Insights are for informational purposes only and are not a guarantee that any given event will occur.

Where does the general conditions benchmark come from?

To see a benchmark on an active project, a company must have at least two completed projects that are the same project type within the same budget range, and that meet the benchmark project data requirements. The general conditions budgets and spend for those completed projects are used to generate the internal benchmark range. How is project duration determined?

We use the start and end dates fields you defined in the project’s Admin settings. The "Actual Start" and "Projected Finish" dates are given priority, but if either is left blank, then the "Start Date" or "Completion Date" will be used.

What are the data requirements for a project to be considered a general conditions benchmark?

• Must have a start and end date entered in the Admin settings, and duration must be >3 months
• Minimum of $15,000 allocated to general conditions
• A current overall budget greater than $0
• Direct costs entered in the Direct Costs tool that are greater than $0
• Must have a project type associated with it
• These next two criteria are used to remove outliers:
  • Overall General Conditions spend (sum of direct costs and commitment invoices) is between 50% to 200% of the General Conditions budget.
  • When dividing the project duration into 10 equal parts, must have logged costs in at least six of them, and no single project tenth can have more than 70% of the total spend.

Why am I not seeing a general conditions benchmark for a project?

To see a benchmark, a project must have at least two completed projects that meet data requirements and are of the same project type and in the same budget range as the project in question. If a project is missing a project type or dates, these fields can be updated on the project level insights, or by batch adding missing information. See How to batch add missing information to ongoing and previous projects. Once project type and/or dates are entered, a project still may not see any insights if there aren’t two completed projects that meet the data requirements.

What does ‘based on’ mean for general conditions insights?

'Based on' refers to the number of completed projects of the same project type and budget range that an internal benchmark is generated from. If the given project does not have a project type entered, or if there are not two completed projects to form the benchmark, then this will say ‘Unknown’, and no benchmark will be seen.

What does 'cost codes' mean for general conditions insights, and what cost codes are included?

Cost Codes shows the general condition line items being tracked. The feature first assumes you are tracking general condition line items in divisions 0 or 1 (or 00 / 01) within the Budget tool. If your company does not have a division(s) labeled 0 or 1 (00 / 01), no cost codes will be selected upon first use. To modify and update the cost codes that make up your general conditions, see How to configure the cost codes for General Conditions insights.

Note that if you create or delete, the following cost codes are not included: 

• Any cost code name with “profit” or “contingency” in it
• Any cost code name with “fee” in it. Note that “fees” is accepted, as it’s oftentimes used in phrases such as legal fees, permit fees, etc.

How is project duration for general conditions insights determined?

We use the start and end dates fields you defined in the project’s Admin settings. The "Actual Start" and "Projected Finish" dates are given priority, but if either is left blank, then the "Start Date" or "Completion Date" will be used.

How do I backfill project duration and project type so that I can see better insights?

To unlock more insights on your projects, batch add missing information to ongoing and previous projects. Access this feature by clicking Unlock insights on the portfolio level general condition insights. Or, enter information on a project directly on project level insights. See How to batch add missing information to ongoing and previous projects.

How are the various amounts for general conditions insights calculated?

• Estimated funds at project end -  This is calculated by using the benchmark projects to determine an average spend rate for the remaining portion of the project, then subtracting this estimated spend from the remaining budget. That is, if the project is 60% complete, we estimate, based on the benchmark projects, what percentage of the original budget is spent in the final 40% of the project. We then subtract this amount from the remaining budget.
• Last month's total spend - This is the amount of general conditions that was spent in the previous month.
• Actual funds (in burn rate chart) - This is determined as the total spend on the project to date subtracted from the total approved budget on the project to date.
• Budgeted amount (in burn rate chart) - This is the total approved budget on the project to date.
• Internal benchmark (in burn rate chart) - This is determined by calculating the average percent of the general conditions budget your benchmark projects have spent by this point in the project and then adding one standard deviation for the upper benchmark and subtracting one standard deviation for the lower benchmark. We multiply the percent of the budget spend by the total approved budget on the project to date, then subtract this amount from the total approved budget.
• Spend (in burn rate chart) - This is the total amount spent in the previous month.
• Actual (under spending changes) - This is the total amount spent in the previous month for this line item.
• Percent change (under spending changes) - This is calculated as the actual spend from two months ago minus the actual spend from last month divided by the actual spend from two months ago.

What happens if I click on a project name in insights on Account Home for general conditions insights?

Clicking on the name of the project will open up the project level insight.

How are the top spending changes determined for general conditions insights?

The top spending changes are those that have had the largest change in spend from one month to the next, at the cost code level of detail.

What happens if I click ‘Go to Budget’ in general conditions insights?

Clicking ‘Go to budget’ takes you to the budget page for that project, filtered to their general conditions line items.

What happens when I click on the cost codes under spending changes in general conditions insights?

Clicking on any of the cost codes takes the user to the budget page for that project, filtered to those specific cost codes.

How do I hide general conditions insights?

The insights cards can be hidden by dismissing the tile. Dismissing the insight will permanently remove it from the page dismissed from. The tiles on Account Home, Project Home, and in the Budget tool must be dismissed separately.

What happens if I change the project duration or project type for general conditions insights?

Benchmarks are based on projects that are matched by project type and budget range, so if the project type is changed, the benchmark will change or appear/disappear based on the number of matching completed projects of the same type. If project duration is changed, the burn chart will adjust accordingly.

How are topics determined for RFI insights?

Our machine learning algorithm scans your RFIs and clusters those that are similar. RFI Topics are generated based on the content within the RFI. RFI topics can be thought of as the subject matter of the RFI. Examples of topics include ‘stairs landing tread’, ‘alarm fire smoke detectors’ and ‘paint finish color’. If the RFI doesn’t have enough information to assign a topic, the topic is listed as ‘Unknown’.

How are categories determined for RFI insights?

RFI categories are the type of question being asked in the RFI. Procore Insights uses word patterns to match your RFIs to one of our predefined RFI categories:

How do I filter the RFI insights?

RFI insights shown are based on the group of RFIs included in the fitler set. To change or apply filters, click ‘Filter’ on the upper left. You can filter by assignee company of the RFI, project type, RFI topic, RFI category, and/or project name. Once you’ve made your filter selection, click ‘Apply filters’. You can see the filters that have been applied on the top of the page.

What does based on mean for RFI insights?

The based on section indicates the number or projects, project types, RFIs and assignee companies included in the set of RFIs included in the filters that you have applied. Click ‘view projects’ to see the projects (number, name, and type) that have been included.