Case study / Contract Management
FastDraft: Turning Contract Management Data into Portfolio-Wide Intelligence
Background
Good contract management tooling. Limited portfolio visibility.
FastDraft is an enterprise-grade contract and project management platform built for the way construction works — automating workflows, enforcing compliance with NEC, JCT and FIDIC contracts, and replacing the scattered emails and spreadsheets that typically surround contract administration. But like most construction tools, it was designed to work project by project.
For a leading tier 1 contractor rolling out FastDraft as part of a broader strategy around technical excellence and digital construction, the challenge wasn't adoption. It was insight. The platform generates significant and valuable contract management data across the business — but surfacing that data in a way that gives leadership, business unit teams and project managers a consistent portfolio-wide view required more than FastDraft's built-in reporting could provide. The business engaged Acumine to design and deliver the solution.
No cross-project portfolio view
FastDraft's standard reporting shows metrics for the project a user is currently logged into. Aggregating contract data across multiple projects — to give leadership or business unit leads a portfolio-wide picture — required an external reporting platform.
Flexible requirements from day one
With FastDraft still in its early adoption stage, the organisation was still developing its approach to contract management practice. Any reporting solution needed to be built with enough flexibility to evolve as usage matured and requirements became clearer.
A complex user access model
FastDraft configures users across three tiers: by user type, by contractual party and by role assigned per contract. Together, these create a potentially complex matrix of access profiles that any reporting solution needed to mirror correctly.
System performance constraints
To preserve application performance during the working day, FastDraft runs bulk exports and document generation overnight. Live bulk reporting across all projects during daytime hours was not a native capability — making an external data platform essential.
What FastDraft captures
Rich contract data across three APIs — underused for management insight.
FastDraft generates structured data across the full lifecycle of NEC, JCT and FIDIC contract administration: events, communications, programme submissions, approvals and user activity. Acumine integrated three separate FastDraft APIs to bring that data together into a single, scalable reporting platform.
Contract events
Early warnings, compensation events and claims
FastDraft tracks contractual events across every project — but reporting on volumes, states and outstanding items across the portfolio required extracting and structuring this data outside the platform.
Communications
Workflow activity and response performance
Every communication, submission and approval in FastDraft carries a timestamp and status. Building insight from this — response times, overdue items, communication volumes by project — required a reporting layer capable of working across all workflows simultaneously.
Users and adoption
Platform engagement across the business
FastDraft records user activity, access patterns and engagement by business unit. Turning this into a consistent picture of adoption — and identifying where the tool was being used effectively and where it wasn't — needed more than the platform's built-in views.
The solution
A reporting platform that makes FastDraft work at portfolio scale
Acumine designed and delivered a reporting solution integrating three separate FastDraft APIs into a single, scalable platform — built on Azure and Databricks with Power BI as the reporting layer. The solution gave every audience the view they needed without duplicating effort or changing how project teams use the tool day to day.
Using API-driven data pipelines and a layered data model, we transformed complex, project-by-project contract data into a governed reporting environment that supports both leadership oversight and operational project management. Seven reporting areas were delivered at launch, with the architecture designed to evolve as the organisation's use of FastDraft matures.
01
Leadership utilisation overview
A portfolio-level summary of how FastDraft is being used across the business — giving leadership a clear picture of tool engagement and helping to drive wider adoption and future investment decisions.
02
Tool adoption analytics
Deeper insight into user activity and platform engagement by business unit — going beyond the built-in reports to show where FastDraft is being used effectively and where further support or encouragement is needed.
03
Contract value intelligence
A portfolio-wide view of contract values across business units and projects — with automatic signposting of significant value variations and early warnings where certified amounts are approaching the contract value with substantial works still to complete.
04
Project events dashboard
A structured summary of events and activities on individual projects — with red-flagging where high volumes of outstanding communications or unresolved actions suggest that additional support may be needed on a project.
05
Communications intelligence
A window onto the volume and state of communications across the portfolio — highlighting items needing imminent responses, overdue replies and average response performance by communication type. This insight is used to identify and share good practice across project teams.
06
Programme submissions tracker
Visibility of programme submission status across projects — prompting transparent, informed conversations about delays and giving commercial and project teams the data to engage proactively with clients on programme matters.
07
Data quality monitoring
Given the early-stage deployment and the absence of uniform field validation in FastDraft, the platform proactively identifies missing or incorrect core metadata — enabling teams to correct issues before they undermine the value of the reporting.
Outcomes
Contract management insight that goes further than the platform
Portfolio visibility that didn't exist before
Leadership gained a consistent view of FastDraft utilisation, contract values and communications performance across the portfolio — without logging into individual projects or relying on manually prepared reports from project teams.
Project teams prompted to act earlier
By surfacing open changes and outstanding communications in a structured way, the reporting gave project teams a clearer picture of where close-out effort was needed — supporting more timely resolution and reducing the risk of items building up unchecked.
Adoption tracked and managed
The business could see how FastDraft was being used across the organisation — identifying business units and project teams who were engaging with the tool effectively and those who needed support. This turned adoption from an assumption into a measurable outcome.
Contract risk surfaced earlier
Automatic flagging of value variations and early warnings where certified amounts are approaching contract value gave commercial and project leadership a structured basis to question resource allocation and project financial health before problems escalated.
Technology
FastDraft contract data structured for portfolio management in Power BI
The solution integrates three separate FastDraft APIs using Azure data pipelines, structuring contract, communications and user data through a layered data model before surfacing portfolio, project and communications performance in Power BI. Project teams continue using FastDraft as normal — the reporting platform gives leadership and business unit teams the visibility the tool alone cannot provide.
This approach — integrating a specialist construction tool via its API and building a scalable reporting layer in Power BI — is one Acumine applies across a growing range of platforms. If your business uses FastDraft and wants more from its contract data, we can build the same for you.
Work with Acumine
Using FastDraft and want more than the built-in reports?
If your teams are using FastDraft but leadership doesn't have the portfolio-level visibility they need, Acumine can build the reporting layer that bridges the gap — integrating FastDraft's APIs with your data environment to deliver structured insight across contract values, communications, programme submissions and tool adoption.