In brief
Why Does Procurement Tracking Matter for General Contractors?
General contractors cannot afford to treat procurement tracking as a subcontractor task or a spreadsheet exercise. Because the GC remains accountable for the schedule and budget, teams need visibility from submittal approval through ordering, fabrication, and delivery. Teaching project engineers how that process connects to the construction schedule helps them identify risk earlier and develop real procurement judgment—not simply maintain a log.
Two years ago, I was standing at our booth at an industry conference, doing what you do at these things — trying to stop people as they walked by to get 30 seconds of their attention. One of those conversations stuck with me ever since.
The encounter, which probably ended well before the 30-second mark, made me realize that general contractors can’t assume that everyone in their organization understands why procurement tracking matters, even at senior levels.
Indeed, if GCs want their teams to take materials procurement seriously, they need to educate everyone on their teams about both the “why” and the “how” of procurement.
The Reality on the Ground: Who's Actually Doing the Tracking?
Here’s the part that doesn’t get talked about enough: the person carrying the day-to-day weight of procurement tracking on most projects is a Project Engineer, and that PE is often just a year or two out of school — fresh degree, first or second job, thrown onto a live project with a superintendent who tells them, essentially, “just make sure the right material shows up at the right time, and I’ll handle everything else.”
That’s a lot to put on someone with limited experience, and it’s made worse by what is usually handed over to them: a spreadsheet. This is not because spreadsheets are a good tool for this job — they aren’t — but because there isn’t a truly effective tracking system for the space between “submittal approved” and “material delivered.” There’s a system for submittals. There’s a system for the schedule. Nothing connects the two and tells you, in real time, whether an order has been placed, whether fabrication has started, or whether an upstream delay is about to become your problem.
Instead, procurement tracking defaults to disconnected spreadsheets and ends up becoming a time-consuming and frustrating data-entry chore instead of the strategic project management skill it actually is.
Meanwhile, relying on offloading procurement tracking to subcontractors or trade partners is a massive risk. The GC is ultimately accountable for the schedule and the budget. If you don’t maintain a single source of truth for what material is coming when, and what’s at risk, you’re not managing the project — you’re waiting to react to it.
The Silver Lining: The Upside of Starting Fresh
Here’s the part that I find encouraging. Those same junior PEs who are handed a blank spreadsheet on Day One are usually tech-savvy millennials and Gen Zers who arrive without any baggage of legacy systems. As a result, they can also pick up new tools and tech both easily and naturally. That’s a real advantage if GCs choose to use it.
By educating a new PE from Day One on a purpose-built platform instead of antiquated spreadsheet systems, you’re doing much more than just giving them a better method. You’ll have an opportunity to teach them the actual mechanics of procurement: how a submittal turns into an order, how an order turns into a fabrication timeline, how that timeline connects back to the schedule and to risk. They’ll be building a real skill instead of learning how to format spreadsheet cells.
Proof from the Field: Barton Malow Case Study
We saw this play out directly on a University of Central Florida stadium expansion project with Barton Malow — new construction on both sides of an existing, fully operational venue, followed by demolition and a western expansion tying it all together. Twenty-five to thirty-five active subcontractors, a wide range of fabrication scenarios, multiple concurrent phases. Not exactly a forgiving environment for “figure it out with a spreadsheet.”
Riley Arnold, a Project Engineer on that project, had no prior exposure to spreadsheet-based tracking. He quickly picked up ConstructivIQ and used it to manage 15+ subcontractors, updating lead times and adjusting for fabrication changes directly in the platform rather than juggling exports. And by walking through each step of the procurement sequence — submittal to delivery — inside the platform, Riley developed a genuine understanding of how procurement works. Not just how to fill out a tracking sheet, but how the process itself functions. He was also able to develop a clear-eyed view of what the platform could make possible, and understood the value of having procurement planning and material tracking consolidated in one place.
Education Precedes Technology
Educating their teams on the “why” behind procurement tracking is a priority at DPR Construction, a leading self-performing GC focused on highly complex projects. The company has an enterprise license of ConstructivIQ and has deployed it on 250+ projects and counting.
Before introducing a new process or software, DPR leaders first educate their teams on why tracking procurement matters. Software is only a means to an end. It won’t fix a problem that your team doesn’t understand.
The GCs who treat foundational education on procurement seriously are taking another step towards protecting their margins. They’re also guiding PEs to become strong project managers, not merely spreadsheet operators.
The first step isn’t opening a new piece of software to get the work done. It’s making sure your team understands why the work matters in the first place.
FAQs
Who is responsible for procurement tracking on a construction project?
Project engineers often manage day-to-day procurement tracking, but the general contractor remains accountable for the project schedule and budget. Subcontractors and trade partners can provide status updates, but the GC still needs a reliable source of truth for what has been ordered, what is in fabrication, when materials are expected, and what may be at risk.
Why are spreadsheets not enough for construction procurement tracking?
Spreadsheets can record procurement information, but they do not automatically connect submittal approvals, ordering, fabrication timelines, delivery dates, and the construction schedule. Because updates are manual, the information can quickly become stale as schedules, lead times, and project conditions change, leaving teams to react after a risk has already become a problem.