Regional GC Cuts Cash-Cycle Days from 52 to 31 on a $180M Pipeline

A mid-size general contractor running 18 active commercial projects was funding the gap between sub payment and owner draw out of its own working capital. Pay-app reviews, waiver chases, and draw-binder assembly added weeks of drag to every cycle. The finance team measured cash conversion at 52 days — a figure the CFO described as the firm's single largest operating cost.

The root cause was fragmentation. Pay apps lived in PDFs, waivers in DocuSign folders, insurance in spreadsheets, and draws in owner email threads. Reconciliation was a monthly crisis. Two draws in the prior year were held for more than three weeks over missing lower-tier waivers — consuming over $2.4M of working capital each.

Subcontractor Audit was stood up as the money layer across all 18 active projects. A named operating team handled pay-app intake and review, statutory waiver generation against approved amounts, and weekly draw-package assembly. Compliance gates were wired so money could not move with an expired COI or a missing lower-tier waiver.

The GC's PMs continued to own the approve/hold decision. The platform handled everything in the seams — parsing G702s on submission, routing waivers for signature, posting approved pay apps back to Sage 300 CRE, and producing the owner draw package with all evidence in place.