Continued Growth on the Horizon: Nelson Construction’s Rise After Year One with HeavyBid

Bidding is a messy, stressful process with many different variables bordering on countless. Many estimators are unaware that HeavyBid not only makes their job easier but also makes them look good, winning more accurate bids that bring in more money for the company and its employees.

Nelson Construction Makes Their Mark

Forming in 2003 in Walla Walla, Washington, Nelson Construction began as an expert in a particular niche, primarily focusing on concrete work for small commercial and residential projects in its direct area. In more recent times, the company has branched out into general contract work, carrying out jobs nationwide in public and commercial markets beyond the Pacific Northwest.

As their General Manager, Cory Bell, PMP, had previously used HCSS software with another company. When he joined Nelson, he recognized a need for implementing technology that could keep up with the company’s substantial growth. Fast-forward just over one year, and Nelson has hit the milestone of completing its first full year of using HeavyBid.

“It was pretty smooth,” Bell says of getting their employees onboarded with HeavyBid. “I think the win is consistency in the actual work plan estimating, being able to look at things at the resource level and dial things in and out, reducing risk because of quantity calculations.”

Many of their bids won are now site work and roadways. Some of these jobs are even Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) projects. For example, last year, Nelson carried out two airport projects. This year, they have three more FAA projects in the works. Along with absolutely stunning architectural concrete work, Nelson has also gotten into large wind tower foundations – we’re talking huge 700 cubic yard foundations – for the renewable energy sector.

Connecting HeavyJob to HeavyBid

The experience with HeavyBid has been so positive that Nelson just wrapped up the implementation of connecting HeavyJob as well.

“As far as Nelson goes, the implementation really went well,” Bell comments. “It’s always tough to implement something brand new because you have to get it up and going, and then once you get up and going, then you can start refining. With HCSS, the up-and-going was very quick, very successful, both in HeavyBid and HeavyJob. I was very impressed with HeavyJob. We did training with the foremen, superintendents, and project managers, and when we flipped over from our old system to our new system, it really went pretty seamless.”

Even in the short period of time since they have begun using the program in the office and the field, Cory Bell has noticed an impact.

“The positive thing is our foremen in the field are accurately getting crew resources and equipment resources accounted for,” he says. “We’ve recently made a push on accuracy and quantities. As far as daily reporting and viewing job costs, [for] the jobs that were budgeted using HeavyBid, we’re looking at daily unit costs, which is something that we didn’t have with our old time card system.”

In particular, certain features of HeavyJob can’t be replicated with other programs that just didn’t cut it.

“It’s helped with our tracking of equipment,” Bell adds. “The time card system that we had before had the ability to look at equipment but not like HeavyJob does. [With] HeavyJob, you can pull a report and it tells you the hours. In the old system, you couldn’t have more than one piece of equipment tied to an employee. With HeavyJob, you can tie multiple pieces of equipment to one employee, and it will accept it.”

Continuing to Grow

One current goal Bell looks forward to is evaluating their hit rate year over year. This is an effective metric to look at and know their percentage of coming in second, then know if they have made any improvement on their costs. Having just started to build work that was estimated in HeavyBid and now being tracked in HeavyJob, they aim to make the most of unlocking the power of the two programs getting used in tandem.

Over the past 20 years, Nelson Construction has experienced substantial growth, and to continue that streak, the team knows it has to stay ahead of the curve.

“Right now, there’s more complexity, more risk, and a bigger need for accountability,” Bell says. “And that’s really why I came on board.”

With the help of HCSS software, that upward trajectory sure seems destined to continue.

Are you ready to take the next step in exploring HeavyBid and HeavyJob in a custom demo? A construction software expert is ready to show how HCSS can help. Get in touch today!