ADV Construction
Management Relay
and ERP Upgrade
ADV Construction
GCC Group (Groupe GCC), a leading French mid-sized civil engineering and construction company, generates approximately €1.175 billion in revenue and employs ~3,062 people across 52 decentralized entities in France and Switzerland. In 2017, GCC acquired ADV Construction, a Swiss structural construction specialist based in Kanton Vaud with CHF 46 million in revenue and ~200 employees.
Revenue
Employees
Decentralized entities
Challenge
These specific issues indicate your company needs an immediate intervention:
Following the acquisition, GCC required ADV to align with group reporting standards, including shifting the fiscal year-end from 31 December to 30 September and implementing monthly activity measurements adjusted to final forecasts.
This created two major issues:
- Improper cut-off accruals led to inaccurate 2019-2020 year-end results and unforecasted losses.
- A mismatch in project accounting methods: Swiss operations used quantity-based progress measurement (making reliable final forecasts difficult), while French practices relied on fixed contract amounts with budget/margin targets and separate tracking of variations. These differences were compounded by cultural and system limitations.
GCC terminated the incumbent CFO and urgently needed a 12-month interim manager with an agile approach to bridge cultural gaps, strengthen treasury management, and improve reporting processes.
Solution
I first reassured ADV’s Managing Director and GCC leadership by conducting a full balance sheet reconciliation and reviewing all year-end closing journals. This identified key risk areas, including accounts receivable and the fixed asset register.
Weekly alignment meetings with GCC headquarters were established for six months. To address system constraints, I led an ERP comparison for finance and HR modules. Treasury processes were enhanced through rigorous accounts receivable cleaning and close monitoring of customer payments.
Results
Reconciliation Revealed
The reconciliation revealed significant issues: CHF 1.7 million in uncollectible receivables required write-off, and CHF 1 million in missing salary-related accruals was identified in the 2019–2020 accounts. Combined with a CHF 700K variance from cut-off misses resolved over three months of collaboration with the financial controller, these adjustments added CHF 2.4 million to the reported loss — shifting the actual result from –7% to –13% of turnover.
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