Replacing disconnected project accounting and subcontract management

Client Overview

Company Name

Carrick Bridge Engineering Ltd.

Company Address

14 Knockmore Road, Lisburn, BT28 2EA, Northern Ireland.

Industry Details

Civil engineering and groundworks contractor delivering road infrastructure, drainage schemes, earthworks, and reinforced concrete structures for public sector, local authority, and private developer clients across Northern Ireland and Great Britain. ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015 certified. Operates across multiple concurrent contracts of varying scale and duration.

Entity Size

Around 185 employees across site operations, plant, engineering, and commercial functions.

Product/Solutions Implemented

Dynamics 365 Business Central, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

Duration of Project

10 months.

Carrick Bridge Engineering logo

We replaced a fragmented combination of Sage 50 and standalone project spreadsheets at Carrick Bridge Engineering with a unified Dynamics 365 Business Central and Supply Chain Management environment. Project cost tracking, plant hire billing, subcontract purchase order management, and multi-contract revenue recognition now run from a single system. Variation order leakage that had been affecting 35% of civil contracts was closed through a structured approval workflow in BC. Carrick Bridge Engineering Ltd. is a family-owned civil engineering and groundworks contractor founded in Lisburn, Northern Ireland in 1983, delivering road infrastructure, drainage, earthworks, and reinforced concrete structures for public sector and private developer clients across Ireland and Great Britain.

A civil engineering business where margin lives in the variations, the plant utilisation, and the subcontract costs that never quite match the original programme. Until the system joins those three things together, the real project picture is always a month behind.

Dynamics 365 Business CentralDynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
Dynamics 365 implementation for Carrick Bridge Engineering

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The Challenge

  • Project accounting ran in Sage 50 with no link to site operations. Cost postings were made weekly by the commercial team from paper returns, leaving the project position perpetually out of date.
  • Plant hire costs from both owned plant and external hire were allocated to contracts manually from plant manager timesheets. Internal plant was consistently under-charged to contracts, subsidising underperforming jobs invisibly.
  • Subcontract purchase orders were raised informally by site managers by email and phone. There was no committed cost view for subcontractors, making contract cost-to-complete estimates unreliable.
  • Variation orders on public sector contracts were tracked in a shared spreadsheet by the commercial team. Approved variations were sometimes missed in the final account due to filing errors, with losses on 35% of contracts in the prior year.
  • CIS tax deductions on subcontractor payments were calculated manually by the payroll administrator. Errors occurred regularly and one HMRC compliance review in 2022 resulted in a penalty.
  • Month-end cost reporting across 14 concurrent contracts took the commercial director 9 working days and was considered approximate rather than accurate by the board.

Our Solution

Project Cost Management and Plant Allocation

  • Business Central was deployed as the primary project and finance platform. Each civil contract is set up as a job in BC with a budget, programme milestones, and a cost breakdown structure aligned to the contract bill of quantities.
  • Site cost postings are now made daily by site supervisors via mobile app. Labour, materials, and plant are booked against the contract job in real time, giving the commercial team a live cost versus budget position on every active contract.
  • Internal plant hire is charged to contracts from BC asset management at standard rates configured per machine type. External plant hire invoices are matched to BC plant hire purchase orders before payment is released, closing the historical under-charging gap.
  • Subcontract purchase orders are raised and approved in BC before any subcontractor commences work on site. Committed subcontract cost is visible in the contract cost-to-complete from the moment the order is placed.

Variation Management and Subcontract Compliance

  • A variation order workflow in BC captures each variation with its reference, agreed value, and contract section. Approved variations are linked to the contract job and included in the final account automatically.
  • CIS tax deduction calculations in BC are applied to subcontractor payment runs automatically based on the subcontractor's CIS verification status held in the system. HMRC payment and return submissions are prepared from BC data without manual calculation.
  • Supply Chain Management was configured to manage materials procurement against contract requirements, with delivery scheduling linked to site programme milestones.

Finance and Reporting

  • Consolidated contract P&L across all active contracts is available daily in BC. Revenue is recognised on a percentage completion basis calculated from certified valuations posted in BC.
  • Month-end cost reporting is automated from BC job ledger entries. The commercial director's 9-day manual process has been replaced by a same-day report run from BC.
  • Retention management in BC tracks client retention deducted on valuations and subcontract retention withheld, with release workflows triggered on practical completion certification.

The Impact

Carrick Bridge moved project accounting, plant allocation, subcontract cost control, variation management, revenue recognition, and CIS compliance into one Dynamics 365 environment.

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Faster Reporting

Commercial reporting cycle time cut by roughly 90%, from a multi-day manual exercise to a same-day automated run from BC job ledger entries.

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Variation Leakage Recovered

Variation order workflow in BC closed the 35% loss rate on final account variations across public sector contracts.

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CIS Compliance Accuracy

CIS deduction calculations now run automatically from BC. No compliance penalties since go-live.


Civil engineering margins are thin and they come from the detail. The variation you miss, the plant cost you do not charge, the subcontract you commit to without a purchase order. Dynamics put every one of those details in one place and we can see the real position on every contract every day.

Ronan Carrick
Managing Director
Carrick Bridge Engineering Ltd.

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