Avoid a Cash Crunch: What Every Construction Executive Needs to Know About Over/Underbilling Risk

The construction failures that make headlines rarely happen during the slowdown. They happen in the recovery — when backlog surges, crews ramp back up, and contractors chase growth faster than their cash position can support it. By the time the bank or surety flags a problem, the damage is already baked into months of undisciplined billing.

That disconnect almost always traces back to one place: how the Work-in-Progress position has been managed, or ignored. Overbilling and underbilling aren’t just accounting footnotes — they’re leading indicators of liquidity strain, eroding bonding capacity, and weakening credibility with lenders and sureties, often long before a crisis becomes visible on a balance sheet.

In this session, John Meibers, VP & GM of Deltek ComputerEase, goes beyond the basics of WIP reporting to address the scenario experienced executives actually face: how to scale responsibly in an expansion cycle without letting billing discipline slip. He’ll break down how to read your WIP position the way a CFO or surety would, spot early warning signs across a growing project portfolio, and use that visibility to make faster, better-informed decisions about which jobs — and how much growth — your cash flow can actually support.

Attendees will leave with a sharper lens for turning a routine WIP report into a real leadership tool: one that protects margin, informs growth decisions, and keeps the next expansion cycle from becoming the next cash crunch.