“When you buy an HCSS product, you are buying years and years of both programmers and users figuring out what problems they need solved,” says Mario Smith, President of Waters Construction in Bridgeport, CT. “There are a myriad of business problems that new and old construction companies have, and their solutions are fully developed functions of HCSS heavy construction software. When you make it yourself or buy something else, you don’t get the benefit of all the problem-solving that has happened over those 2-3 decades.”
Waters Construction is a family-owned general contractor, and one of the earliest adopters of HCSS. In the early 1990s, Mario tried to develop a digital estimating solution for his company, but software was not his business - construction was. After reading an HCSS print ad, he wrote a letter to Mike Rydin, HCSS Founder. Mike sent Mario a floppy disk, and Mario remembers installing it, and feeling relieved that he had found a solution. More than 25 years later, Waters Construction has standardized their estimating, project management, safety, and fleet management using HCSS products.
For project management and safety, Mario explained that HCSS HeavyJob has empowered its users with an ownership mindset that has helped them understand the business and how they can help it grow. “HeavyJob helps partner the supers and foremen to provide information back to estimators and the controller,” said Mario. “It is a great way of engaging the field with the financial and legal side of the company. It is a more open book way of managing your jobs, and we have seen our employees work smarter for the company, as a result. This connects the foremen, the supers, the safety director, and the office to one common goal.”
Mario said that as personal devices replaced laptops in the field, HCSS listened to the users in the field, and made their HeavyJob mobile a product they wanted to use every day. “We don't produce things in our offices, everything is done out in the field,” said Mario. “When there is a product that truly affects the productivity and the management of construction sites, contractors will jump on things rather quickly. Contractors saw the immediate benefits of giving a foreman or super an iPad or a smartphone to communicate. Even people who might not be particularly tech-savvy saw the benefits of that. HCSS was on the frontier of that, and provided a good transition for us as technology changed.”
In the early years of Waters Construction, they needed to solve the problem of training new estimators to be consistent. “People come and go. With HeavyBid, we can take someone from our paving division, who has never estimated, and within 6 months or less they are able to price things consistently,” said Mario. “We cannot afford an estimate going out because of an error. When you are using a spreadsheet, it was probably built by you, and you can only see one way of solving the problem. The benefit of HeavyBid’s years of development is seeing risk reduction from many perspectives. Not only that, you have the support when you need it.”
“To this day, I tell everybody that HCSS has the best customer support, bar none, of any software solutions that we use,” said Mario. “I tell my people, ‘Don’t sit here and try to slug it out through the problem. Just call them, they will help you at any time of day.’ The way that HCSS has approached change over the years is amazing. I remain a very loyal customer of HCSS.”
When you have HCSS in the office or the field, you get 35 years of dedicated construction research and software development, 35 years of improvements from direct user feedback, and 35 years of experience providing personal support at all hours of the day.
