As an estimator, the secret to winning profitable jobs is being as accurate as possible in your estimated costs. The more accurate and up to date on current costs you are, the better you can control your margin and gain profit. But being accurate is a big challenge due to different scenarios that can happen out in the field. When you get detailed information back from the field on a per-cost code basis, you can pinpoint exactly why and where the actual job costs were different from the estimate.
You can quickly fact-check how accurate your estimated production rate is in HeavyBid using your job production history that is saved in HeavyJob. By using them together, it’s easy to use to quickly answer questions like:
- What were my actual costs in the past year for furnishing and installing 10,000 LF plus or minus 10% of 24” RCP pipe?
- What is my average production rate on paving jobs with our 10 person crew?
- How much faster would we finish a job with 2 extra equipment rentals?
Let’s explore how estimators are competing and winning more bids using the power of HeavyBid and HeavyJob together.
Using your job production history in three steps
Evan is estimating a job that includes installing 100,000 LF of 24” RCP Pipe. He has an idea of how much it usually costs and he may be 100% correct, but he wants to double-check so he can be confident he isn’t underbidding or overbidding.
Current Estimate: 0.3 units completed per man hour
Let’s see how his estimate stacks up with the data.
1. Click the binocular
In HeavyBid, Evan has his equipment, crew and materials ready but needs his production rate. He can click on the binocular icon on the right to get instant access to all his past job history from HeavyJob.
2. Search your history
Evan can search by cost code, activity, or keyword to find all related jobs. He types in “24″ RCP” to instantly find 8 past related jobs.
He can see the units per man-hour average from all these jobs without ever having to call up someone in the field or search through any files.
3. Filter your jobs
Evan can make his bid even more accurate by filtering out jobs that aren’t similar to the current bid. He can filter by date to exclude any jobs older than two years old and only includes projects with quantities higher than 15,000 LF of RCP. He can choose to include or exclude jobs that had extraneous situations, like plan errors or a wild flamingo attack.
In just seconds, Evan has finished his research.
He knows exactly what his team is capable of doing in the field. He can even copy the production rates directly into the notes section in HeavyBid so he can show others how he got this rate. Because of recent equipment additions, his team has increased their production rate and is working faster than he expected.
Evan can update his previous estimate of .3 units per man-hour to .4 units per man-hour to make an incredibly competitive bid with confidence that it can be done.
Using HeavyJob and HeavyBid together can save you time and money in other ways
- Save data entry time by sending your bid from HeavyBid into HeavyJob and create the job in about four minutes.
- Get your time cards created in 10 minutes a day with crew hours, quantities, equipment, materials, and more.
- Project Managers can approve or revise time cards then instantly send them to payroll for direct import into their accounting system – saving the team hours spent validating and typing up job information.
- Prevent errors before they happen with estimator notes imported directly from HeavyBid into time cards.
- Improve field-to-office communication with notifications, crew signatures, field approvals, and RFI tracking or submittals activity tracking.
- See job costing in real-time against the budget with job analysis, showing Foremen and Project Managers if they’re behind or ahead of the budget is easy to understand red and green.
- HeavyBid, HeavyJob, and your accounting system all work together to pass job costs, quantities, hours worked, and cost codes so you never have to key anything in. It’s error-free and automatic with TrueUp and Data Integration Studio.
Together HeavyBid and HeavyJob help you bid accurately with actual production rates, making your estimate as competitive as possible.
If you want to explore HeavyBid construction estimating software or HeavyJob, we’re here to help. Give us a call at 800-683-3196 or click the button below and we’ll call you.
Explore More:
- Read how RAWSO tripled their revenue in just one year by using HeavyJob and HeavyBid together
- Check out our upcoming webinars
