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The company is exhibiting at Farnborough this week within a joint aerospace and defense framework with SAP, Cognitus and Twenty5, following a May release it describes as the largest product investment in its history.
Cora Systems released a platform update on May 28 that combines cost management, scheduling and earned value management in one system. The company states the release replaces the five to six disconnected tools a typical program office operates and reduces monthly data processing from weeks to hours, with manual reconciliation error rates reduced to near zero. Cost performance index, schedule performance index and estimate at completion are calculated from live project data rather than spreadsheet exports. The platform runs automated 14-point DCMA schedule health checks, generates IPMDAR reports, holds FedRAMP Ready status and includes an SAP-certified connector to S/4HANA.
Cora is exhibiting this week at the Farnborough International Airshow, which opened on July 20 with 1,636 exhibitors. Ahead of the show, the company announced a joint end-to-end offering for aerospace and defense with SAP, Cognitus, an IBM company, and estimating vendor Twenty5, covering cost estimation, bidding, contract execution and compliance reporting. Cora’s component covers schedule, cost, risk, earned value management and IPMDAR reporting.
The February threshold change
On February 1, 2026, a US Department of Defense class deviation implementing Section 823 of the FY25 National Defense Authorization Act raised the contract value at which an earned value management system is required from $20 million to $50 million. Formal compliance determination by the Defense Contract Management Agency applies at $100 million and above. The change reduces the number of contracts legally required to operate an EVMS, and with it the compliance-mandated segment of the market Cora sells into. Cost or incentive contracts between $50 million and $100 million must still use a system that complies with EIA-748 guidelines, without formal government validation, and contracts at $100 million and above remain subject to DCMA determination.
Fixed-price loss context
Boeing has recorded more than $7 billion in cumulative losses on the fixed-price KC-46 tanker contract, including a $565 million charge in the fourth quarter of 2025. The company booked $4.9 billion in charges across its fixed-price development programs in 2024. Its defense unit posted a negative 22.6 percent operating margin that year and negative 0.5 percent in 2025. Under fixed-price terms, the contractor bears all costs above the agreed ceiling, and variances identified late in a reporting cycle accumulate against the contractor before corrective action is possible. Cora positions the reduction in reporting lag as directly relevant to this contract structure.
Honeywell figures
Cora’s government contracting materials attribute a $450 million improvement to the bottom line to Honeywell. In the company’s published case study, Honeywell Building Solutions reduced its systems from 22 to fewer than seven, all integrating with the platform. Jeff Hopkins, Honeywell’s vice president of project solutions, credits the platform with approximately $500 million in working capital improvement over roughly a year, and is quoted saying “Cora gives us the superpower to look into the future.”
Company and market position
Cora Systems was founded in 1999 in Carrick-on-Shannon, Ireland, by Philip Martin, who remains chief executive. Scottish Equity Partners made a growth equity investment in the company in June 2023; the amount was not disclosed. Cora reports customers in more than 50 countries, including Honeywell, AbbVie, the UK’s NHS and the City of London, and states its platform governs projects worth more than $100 billion. MarketsandMarkets values the project portfolio management software market at $9.91 billion in 2026, with a forecast of $16.87 billion by 2031 at an 11.3 percent compound annual growth rate. Incumbent earned value and scheduling tools in the defense sector include Deltek Cobra and Oracle Primavera. Cora’s SAP integration positions the platform alongside existing ERP deployments rather than as a replacement of validated toolchains.
