The Challenge
Suresh Nair runs an independent civil engineering practice in Pune — operating as a Project Management Consultant (PMC) for three residential builders simultaneously. The three projects under his oversight: a 24-flat boutique residential in Wakad (₹4.5 cr), a row-house cluster in Hinjewadi (₹6.2 cr) and a duplex villa scheme in Baner (₹3.3 cr) . Total portfolio: ₹14 crore in active build-out.
The structural problem in any multi-project oversight role is information bandwidth. Each project has 2–3 contractors, daily DPRs, weekly RA bills, RERA quarterly filings, and most painful — direct flat-buyers (12 in Wakad, 18 in Hinjewadi, 6 in Baner — 36 individuals) calling and WhatsApping for progress updates. By Q2 2024, Suresh was spending 3–4 hours every day just answering "kab tak hoga sir?" (when will it be done, sir?) messages.
The other slow drain: BOQ-vs-actual variance was running at 12% on average . Some of it was genuine variations, but a lot was untracked overruns — the Hinjewadi structural contractor was 18% over on steel by month 6 before anyone caught it. Builders started losing trust; Suresh's reputation as a tight PMC was at risk.
By 11 am every day I had already spent two hours answering buyers. By the time I got to actual engineering work, my brain was fried.
The Solution
Suresh moved all three projects to Site Setu Professional in May 2024. The single feature that changed his life was the Client Portal. Each flat-buyer got a login showing their unit's progress photos, milestone completion %, expected handover date, and an automated weekly update email. WhatsApp queries dropped by 70% in the first month.
On the BOQ-vs-actual side, Suresh set up live variance monitoring. Whenever any item crossed 5% over BOQ, the system flagged it on the dashboard and sent a WhatsApp alert to him and the relevant contractor. The Hinjewadi steel issue was caught within 4 days of overrun the second time it happened — and corrected. Variance dropped from 12% to under 4% across the portfolio in three quarters.
The third quiet win was GST. Suresh works as a sole-proprietor civil engineering firm; he charges 18% GST on his fees and claims input credit on subscriptions, vehicle expenses and consultant fees. With Site Setu generating GST-compliant invoices and a clean GSTR-1 export every month, his CA could file returns in 90 minutes instead of half a day — and full input credit was claimed every quarter with zero notices.
My builders trust me more now because I catch their cost overruns before they balloon. That's worth the subscription five times over.
The Results
- 3 residential projects worth ₹14 crore total — all running on a single dashboard.
- Client portal cut WhatsApp queries by 70% — 36 flat-buyers self-serve their progress updates.
- BOQ-vs-actual variance dropped from 12% to 4% — early-warning alerts catch overruns within 4 days.
- GST input credit claimed in full every quarter — CA files in 90 minutes, zero departmental notices.
- 3+ hours saved every working day — back to actual engineering work, not screenshot management.
- Builder trust deepened — Suresh signed two new PMC contracts in Q4 2024 on referrals from existing builder relationships.
Three projects, three builders, 36 buyers — and one dashboard. Two years ago, I would have said it was impossible.
What's next
Suresh is now scaling to 5 concurrent projects with one junior engineer hire — confident the dashboard scales without the chaos returning. He's also exploring Site Setu's analytics for tender-stage benchmarking — using historical unit costs to advise his builders on bid pricing for upcoming RERA-registered launches in Hadapsar and Kharadi.
Run Multiple Projects Like Suresh
Book a 30-minute demo. We'll show you the multi-site dashboard and client portal that gave Suresh back his mornings.