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What is Construction Estimating Software?
Construction estimating software helps construction managers, contractors, and companies better calculate the total cost of a construction project. Interesting features of construction estimating software are its accuracy and automation with speed playing an important role in both. Before a contractor begins a construction project, they are required to submit a bid to their clients. The bid is made up of many elements, including estimating the cost of materials, predicting the number of manpower hours a project will take to complete, and comparing resources and labor costs with competitors. A construction project cannot begin without the draft of a cost estimate. The estimated cost may fluctuate when certain aspects of the project were not accounted for or were either overrepresented or underrepresented in the initial bid. The potential for human error is massive in construction projects, which increases the overall cost of the project.
Construction estimating software may either be purchased as a standalone product or bundled within a construction project management platform or construction ERP software. Construction estimating software provides users with tools that automate data entry, pulls the most up-to-date prices of materials and equipment, and identifies labor and overhead costs.
Key Benefits of Construction Estimating Software
- Helps draft accurate bids, aids contractors and construction professionals in moving away from time-consuming legacy tools, and instills more confidence in clients
- Provides users with tools that automate data entry and retrieval, ensuring accuracy and speed
- Reduces the potential for users to misattribute numbers or forget to double-check the availability of a materials
- Enables both the easy adjustment of estimates as well as instant takeoffs (generating a list of materials needed for a project)
- Tracks any deviations and alerts contractors and clients about changes to the final cost, helping contractors to stay close to the original estimate
Why Use Construction Estimating Software?
Contractors and companies are enabled to bid on more projects and win more clients by utilizing construction estimating solutions. With this software, construction professionals spend less time on calculations and focus on cultivating productive client relationships and building financially sound construction projects. Such software helps reduce manual efforts, allowing users to concentrate on critical labor and project management. Construction estimating software is used in both the pre-construction (“pre-con") and operational stages of the construction project lifecycle. For example, when construction estimating software is used post bid as the project progresses, it keeps track of materials management and ongoing costs and also predicts any potential deviances to the initial estimate.
Reporting — Most, if not all, construction estimating software generates reports. Those reports range from straightforward estimates to historical project data to predictive business intelligence. Reports equip contractors with more proof of progress and support the need for increasing materials or labor. Additionally, some construction estimating solutions provide access to an industry database of materials and resources, which helps with initial estimate creations.
Speed — Construction estimating software automates the manual processes that contractors and project managers followed in the past to calculate all costs that a construction project incurs. Construction industry professionals have turned to spreadsheets to offset some of that manual effort, but even spreadsheets are prone to human error and do not necessarily reflect or enable data consolidation.
The most compelling reason to use construction estimating software is speed. Increasing estimation speed results in time saved, meaning increased efficiency and productivity. Speed assists in cutting down the number of hours spent on drafting up one or multiple estimates; it also enables users to minimize data duplication, ensure standardization and consistency across countless projects taking place simultaneously, and facilitates collaboration between project owners, project managers, and individual construction industry professionals.
Process consistency — Additionally, construction estimating software makes processes more consistent, improving the entire construction project lifecycle to help construction businesses scale in the future. With construction estimating software, project managers are enabled to better supervise project progress, delegate responsibilities throughout the entire project lifecycle, and effortlessly review the expenses accrued versus the resulting total profit.
Who Uses Construction Estimating Software?
All types of stakeholders in the construction business use construction estimating software. For construction firms to not exceed budget and resources, they must pull historical project data in addition to analyzing the breadth of the current project via an estimate. While trade-specific estimating software does exist, most general or subcontractors find that the majority of construction estimating solutions fit their needs.
Kinds of Construction Estimating Software
Two specific subsets of construction estimating software include takeoff and bid management. Standalone takeoff and bid management solutions make it easy for smaller construction firms and stakeholders to integrate them with existing solutions and frameworks. Similarly, many construction estimating solutions offer takeoff and bid management functionality within their platform to enable streamlined workflows.
Takeoff — Takeoff functionality automates the quantification of materials and resources vital to a construction project. Effective takeoff streamlines the entire bidding process and showcases granular costs that a construction project will incur.
Bid management — Bid management functionality simplifies and automates the manual process of creating and submitting bids, tenders, and proposals that are critical to construction companies for winning projects.
Construction Estimating Software Features
Construction estimating software offers several critical features along with some “nice-to-have" features that are listed below.
Real-time calculations — Construction calculators automatically estimate or determine the costs of a construction project. Such calculators often have the ability to update costs as a project progresses.
Adjustments to specific or overall bid estimates — Construction estimating software provides the ability to monitor and update costs and track any alternate or substitute resources used during a project. This feature is helpful for progress tracking.
Blueprint or computer-aided design (CAD) image import and export — Import and export of an existing or newly created blueprint or CAD image into the construction estimating software is facilitated.
Proposal templates — Either the software comes prepared with bid proposal templates where users drag and drop data points, or it enables the creation of specialized templates to use in the future.
Proposal generator — Construction estimating software should be able to pull data from takeoff, the resource cost database, the historical database, and any imported data into an integrated proposal generator. The generator is responsible for efficiently and accurately calculating bids that are submitted as part of a construction proposal.
Takeoff — With construction estimating software, estimators are able to effectively estimate the quantity of items that are determined necessary from initial blueprints.
Additional Construction Estimating Features
Historical database — Construction estimating software provides a built-in solution or access to a database that tracks and monitors the materials used, contractors employed, jobs completed, and other related data of past construction projects. Users leverage the data to better estimate costs, time, and resources spent on similar projects.
Materials and resource cost database(s) — The software offers a built-in solution or access to a database full of material inventory, along with the cost of those resources. Users are able to pull material prices directly from the database, which is comprehensive and up to date.
Project progress reporting and tracking — While construction estimating solutions generally do not offer comprehensive project management functionality, these tools may still be able to keep tabs on a construction project in the context of helping users align the initial project estimate with its most current state.
Other Features of Construction Estimating Software: Electrical estimating, Framing estimating, HVAC estimating, Mechanical estimating, Plumbing estimating
Potential Issues with Construction Estimating Software
It is important for business owners and contractors to weigh the pros and cons of investing in construction estimating software. Key stakeholders of a construction company are required to judge if the business has the bandwidth to overcome the pain points of construction estimating software’s learning curve. Other points to note are whether it is financially feasible to adopt new technology and which aspects of the construction project lifecycle they want to streamline, make more efficient, or if they want an entire overhaul. Several issues potentially crop up when deploying and implementing construction estimating software.
Integration — Compatibility is vital with construction estimating software. For example, if the software refuses to, or is reluctant to integrate with accounting solutions, then it adds an unnecessary step to the construction project lifecycle. The construction estimating software takes care of the financial aspects of a construction project but may fail to integrate with the existing accounting solutions.
Unfamiliarity — Spreadsheets are common and rampant within the construction industry because of their familiarity among contractors and other stakeholders of a construction business. Additionally, while construction estimating software tries to be as high level as possible, some specialties are too niche for the tool to adequately support.
Cost — The cost of construction estimating software is more than just the actual cost of the tool. Training, support, and the provision of software updates need to be taken into consideration. Costs of software updates should be considered because if a vendor doesn’t offer regular updates to the product, then a company runs the risk of noncompliance as well as missing out on construction industry trends.
