Estimating Software

6/21/2020 at 4:22:30 PM

Hey Mark, great question! Apologies in advance for fat-finger typing on my phone.

Short answer nothing Canadian for our purpose. There are a few for specialty contractors - drywallers or electrical, HVAC and plumbing subtrades.

We're an established GC in the GTA and have been testing ERP software for the last year while using an inhouse mish mash of Saas, spreadsheet and Accounting software which "mostly" works.

We've shortlisted our trials to two US companies and one German company to see what we can tweak for our needs. As it turns out, it's going to be a better product if we build based on our own internal processes and systems. In terms of cost (100k), we could invest in something like Netsuite for 5 years or develop our own product. ROI in one year vs 5 yrs has put us on the customized path.

Which brings me to why the products/ services out there are either not designed for "us" or need major changes. I say they were never designed for us either because of the lack of standardization in the industry or because of the rigid processes each GC uses to manage their business.

We started from a profit focused approach, then made the estimating quick and simple - load your MAT, LAB, EQU and business logic formulas (think assemblies) and then enter your measurements. Boom, out comes an estimate which with very little adjusting provides a great first look at the project costs.

Adjustments are made by estimators, a little bit of AI driven reporting and a lot of thought as to which of our customer's goals are paramount. The bid process is a breeze on the commercial side and the use of a customer portal ensure both commercial and residential customers can easily approve change orders, make payments and stay in touch with project schedules.

So far it's been a laborious process and a considerable investment but with the 5 jobs we've test through the system, we see a savings in both time and bid costs and an additional benefit of being able to accurately compare budget vs actual and significantly improve the cost-to-complete management reporting. There are a few items which we've had to put on the back burner due to budget constraints but we can always bring back these nice-to-have items later.

Long story but I hope it helps you understand a couple of things: 1. What is wrong with your current system and is it worth the investment to fix it; 2. Will you see an increase in bid opportunities with the increased efficiency?

For a period of time we used Timberline and 3 devoted employees (100k payroll cost) to "manage" the software; now those folks are estimating.