Design Delivery, Made Reliable
Production Control for Engineering Design Teams
Dexec applies production control principles inspired by the Last Planner System® to the design phase, aligning teams, removing blockers, and turning plans into reliable outcomes.
+15%
Faster Delivery
Schedule Velocity
"On average, projects that maintained a PPC above 75% in the design phase finished 15% faster than those with a PPC below 60%." — Shehab et al. (2021)
25%
Less Rework
Quality Control
"Implementation in the design process led to a 25% reduction in the time spent on rework by identifying and removing constraints during the look-ahead process." — Rosas (2019)
5.4%
Less Budget Waste
Efficiency
"Approximately 12% of design budgets are consumed by 'waiting.' Utilizing the full LPS suite mitigated these losses by 45% compared to traditional management." — Viana et al. (2020)
+15%
More Billable Time
Profitability
"Production control reduces non-value-added time by 30%, allowing staff to reallocate 15% of their total billable capacity toward high-value design tasks." — Hamzeh et al. (2023)
Reliable Design Delivery Starts with Better Execution
Dexec — Design Execution, done right.
Featured Modules
The Foundation of Reliable Design Delivery
Dexec Core is the collaborative planning engine that brings Last Planner System (LPS) principles to the design phase — where traditional tools like Primavera P6 often fall short.
Designed specifically for design firms working on complex, multi-package projects, Dexec Core replaces subjective progress updates and chaotic scheduling with a structured, team-driven approach that delivers real visibility and predictability.
Key Capabilities
Collaborative Pull Planning Multiplayer digital pull-planning boards where design managers and package owners work together in real time. Teams build sequences backwards from milestones, clearly mapping dependencies between the 200+ interdependent design packages.
Lookahead Planning & Weekly Work Plans Proactive 2–3 week lookahead planning combined with weekly commitment cycles. Package owners only commit to what they can realistically deliver once all constraints are cleared.
Constraint & Blocker Management Built-in constraint tracking that surfaces missing inputs, review delays, client decisions, or inter-package blockers early — before they impact the entire program.
Rules of Credit (ROC) Engine Accurate, verifiable earned-value progress tracking. Each design package has configurable weighted milestones (e.g., concept approval, draft issuance, internal review, client approval, final release). Progress is only earned when steps are actually completed — giving you a true picture of where the project stands.
Percent Plan Complete (PPC) & Learning Measures planning reliability week after week and captures variance reasons, enabling continuous improvement and more predictable delivery over time.
Real-Time Collaboration Multiple users can plan, update, and resolve issues simultaneously — whether in the office, on-site, or working remotely.
Dexec Core transforms design planning from a top-down, guesswork-heavy process into a bottom-up, reliable production system — giving design teams and project leaders the clarity and control they need to deliver on time and on budget.
It serves as the intelligent foundation for the rest of Dexec. All progress data, constraints, and commitments automatically feed into Dexec Budget for live financial visibility and Dexec Estimate for continuous learning and smarter future tenders.
Live Budget Ownership and Margin Protection
Dexec Budget gives design managers and package owners real-time financial visibility and control over their design packages.
Instead of waiting for delayed finance reports or discovering budget overruns after they’ve already happened, Dexec Budget provides a live, always-up-to-date view of how money is being spent across every design package.
Key Capabilities
Automatic Timesheet Allocation When designers, drafters, and modellers log their time, it is instantly and accurately allocated to the correct design package and cost code — no manual re-entry or guesswork required.
Real-time Budget Tracking See planned budget versus actual spend versus earned progress (linked directly to Rules of Credit) at any moment. Every hour worked updates the numbers immediately.
Live Margin Alerts Get instant notifications when a package is consuming budget faster than planned or when margins are at risk due to delays or resource shifts.
Resource Shift Impact Simulator Before moving people between packages, you can instantly see how that change will affect budgets, burn rates, and overall margins across the program.
Clear Visual Financial Timeline A clean, intuitive timeline view that combines schedule progress with financial data, making it easy to understand the relationship between design delivery and budget performance.
Dexec Budget transforms financial management from a reactive, back-office function into a proactive tool that design managers actively own. It helps prevent the common problem of margin erosion caused by constant resource juggling and gives leadership clear, real-time insight into the true financial health of the design phase.
By linking budget data directly to planning commitments and earned progress, Dexec Budget ensures that financial decisions are based on accurate, up-to-date information rather than outdated reports.
Intelligent Estimating That Actually Learns From Every Project
Dexec Estimate is the powerful intelligence layer that turns past project performance into a genuine competitive advantage for future tenders.
Most design firms start every new bid with a blank sheet and educated guesses. Dexec Estimate changes this by creating a continuous learning loop that automatically captures and analyses real project data from every job you run through the platform.
Key Capabilities
Automatic Learning Engine The system continuously ingests rich data from completed and in-progress projects — including actual hours spent per Rules of Credit step, Percent Plan Complete (PPC) trends, frequency and impact of failed interfaces, resource shift patterns, and true margin performance.
Smart Recommendation Engine When creating a new estimate, Dexec Estimate instantly suggests realistic durations, effort levels, and costs for each design package based on similar work you’ve done in the past. It adjusts recommendations by discipline, project type, and complexity.
Risk-Adjusted Pricing The engine automatically calculates and suggests appropriate contingency levels based on historical planning reliability (PPC), frequency of blockers between packages, and previous margin erosion patterns — helping you avoid the common mistake of under-pricing risky work.
What-If Scenario Modelling Test different resource strategies, scope changes, or schedule compressions in real time and immediately see the projected impact on margins and delivery risk before you submit a tender.
Continuous Improvement Loop After every project closes, Dexec Estimate analyses variances between planned and actual performance, identifies recurring problem areas (e.g., specific interface types that consistently cause delays), and automatically refines its templates and algorithms so future estimates become progressively more accurate and profitable.
Dexec Estimate transforms estimating from a repetitive, high-risk guessing game into a data-driven, continuously improving capability. Over time, firms using Dexec develop a significant edge — they bid more competitively while protecting (and often improving) their margins because their estimates are grounded in real, accumulated intelligence rather than hope and experience alone.
It closes the loop: reliable planning and tracking (Core) → live financial control (Budget) → smarter, learning-based estimating (Estimate). The more you use Dexec, the better your future bids become.
Dexec – 3 Module Architecture
1. Dexec Core
Collaborative Design Delivery & Controls
Dexec Core brings Last Planner System (LPS) principles into the design phase. Design managers and package leads collaborate in real time on pull planning, lookahead planning, weekly commitments, and constraint management.
Built-in Rules of Credit (ROC) provide objective, earned-value progress measurement across every design package, replacing subjective “% complete” reporting with verifiable milestone-based delivery tracking.
2. Dexec Budget
Live Budget Ownership & Margin Protection
Put real financial control in the hands of design managers. Each design package is assigned its own budget and ownership structure, allowing accountability to sit directly with the responsible lead.
Timesheets from designers, drafters, and modellers automatically allocate against the correct package and cost code, providing live visibility of burn rates, margin risk, and resource impacts in real time.
Dexec Budget enables teams to proactively protect profitability instead of discovering overruns at month-end.
3. Dexec Estimate
Intelligent Estimating That Learns From Every Project
Replace assumption-based estimating with real project intelligence. Dexec Estimate leverages historical delivery data, including PPC trends, hours consumed per ROC stage, coordination failures, margin erosion, and resource patterns, to improve the accuracy of future bids and delivery forecasts.
The platform provides recommended durations, risk-adjusted estimating insights, and scenario-based forecasting to help engineering teams prepare tenders that are both competitive and commercially sustainable.