Ken Naughton, president of Management Controls, talks to The Energy Year about the company’s expansion beyond refining into contractor-heavy industries and how geofencing and proof-of-presence data improve cost control.
Management Controls is a developer of cost and compliance management software for industrial and infrastructure projects.
- Management Controls helps industrial operators improve cost control by combining proof-of-presence data with automated contract compliance, replacing manual timesheets with verified contractor activity.
- Real-time visibility into contractor labour enables operators to manage maintenance, turnarounds and capital projects more effectively while reducing costs by 10-15%.
- The company is expanding beyond refining into mining, power and other contractor-intensive industries, supported by geofencing technology that extends contractor management beyond traditional facility boundaries.
Management Controls has been operating for almost four decades. How has the business evolved over the past 10 years?
We started in downstream refining, selling our solution to refineries. Today, the business is broader because it is really not an oil and gas solution at all – it is a contractor management solution. Any industry vertical that uses contractors for routine maintenance, shutdowns, turnarounds or capital projects is a fit. The industry does not matter.
We have expanded into metals and mining, pulp and paper, power generation and other sectors where contractors play a critical role. Another major change has been how we capture contractor activity. Historically, our calculation engine relied on badge events, so we could only serve facilities with fences and access control systems. Today, geofencing allows us to monitor contractors working along pipelines, power transmission lines and at offshore sites without a physical perimeter. That has considerably widened our scope.
What makes myTrack different from an ERP or procurement platform?
Without myTrack, contractors submit timesheets saying how many hours they worked. In reality, those timesheets often bear little resemblance to what actually happened. We do not rely on what contractors say. We establish proof of presence and compare that data with the terms agreed between the project owner and the contractor.
Contracts include overtime rules, per diems, grace periods, rounding rules and many other conditions. Normally, once they are signed, they disappear into a desk drawer. We pull them back out and convert every commercial term into software logic. When someone submits an invoice, myTrack compares the contract with the contractor’s actual time on site and calculates exactly what was earned.
The workflow is effectively inverted. Instead of the contractor telling the owner what they are owed, the owner already knows the correct answer in net billable time that is based on both physical presence and contractual entitlement. Our customers can typically reduce their contractor costs by 10-15%.
Does the contractor data also play a role in managing turnarounds and outages?
Our data is validated against both the gate system and the contract, and it is settled every day. That means what happened this morning is already reflected in the project schedule, budget and resource plan.
On a turnaround, you know on day one if you are burning too much budget or deploying too many people. Traditional systems often deliver actual costs after as many as 45 days. By then, the turnaround may already be finished.
Because our information is available immediately, managers can make decisions for the next shift rather than waiting until the project is over. If contractors are idle because materials have not arrived, or if additional labour is needed, those situations can be handled with a level of visibility that traditional reporting systems simply do not deliver.
Where are you seeing the strongest opportunities for growth?
Energy remains our largest market, although it now represents about 60% of the business rather than the 100% it did originally. We see strong demand from LNG facilities, refineries, chemical plants, mining operations, steel mills and pulp and paper producers.
Our international expansion has largely been within the footprint of our customers. Companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell deployed our platform in the US first, and then in Europe and Asia, while mining customers brought us into Australia. Today, around 75% of our revenue still comes from North America, with the remaining 25% generated internationally.
We deliberately target the largest companies in every industry because they have the greatest contractor spend, the greatest operational complexity and therefore the greatest opportunity to benefit from what we do.
What are your priorities for future growth?
Our commercial model is SaaS with consumption-based pricing. For every dollar of contractor spend flowing through the platform, we take a fraction of a penny. That aligns our incentives with the customer’s, encouraging us to help them manage more contractor spend while reducing fraud, waste and administrative effort.
Growth will come from enterprise rollouts, pilot projects that expand after proving a business case and partnerships with consulting firms or adjacent software providers. Even contractors themselves often recommend myTrack when they arrive at sites that lack visibility.
Proof of presence is about much more than controlling costs. If there is an incident or somebody gets hurt, operators need to know exactly who was on site, where they were and when. Many customers see myTrack less as a tool for preventing overbilling and more as a platform for operational visibility and safety. Knowing who is present at any given moment is just as important for protecting people as it is for managing spend.
Source: theenergyyear.com