There’s a good chance you work in construction – or are even an estimator yourself – in which case, you get it. You know how to obtain a general understanding of a project’s scope, performing a comprehensive quantity takeoff by analyzing the plans and specifications. There’s a ton to consider based on measurements and calculations, including material pricing from suppliers, potential price fluctuations during the project timeline, labor rates, overhead, and so on. As mentioned, you more likely than not know what you’re doing.
Yet to use a football analogy, consider what Vince Lombardi said: “Football is a game of inches and inches make the champion.” There are numerous parallels of this to construction estimating, where winning bids is a game of decimal points. You not only have to narrowly win the bid, but leave as little money on the table as possible to ensure profitability.
Using a construction estimating software solution can significantly help estimators speed up the development of a bid while increasing its accuracy. You can also import bid items from other estimates or DOT websites to reduce the time needed to build an estimate. Let’s go ahead and prove it to you by showing data that backs up these claims.
Analyzing Some Recent Project Letting Results
At HCSS, the product, sales, and IT teams have collaborated on a long-running project to carefully analyze Bid Letting results at the highest level. In May of 2023 alone, 36 state-level transportation agencies tracked solicited bids for almost 1,100 projects.
A total of 1,240 contractors submitted 2,995 bids for those exact projects.
Of those 1,240 contractors, 386 were current customers using construction software from the HCSS platform, particularly the program HeavyBid. Those 386 current HCSS users bid for 618 projects and were the low bidder on 320 (51.7%).
Users of HCSS estimating software averaged 2.7 bids submitted compared to 2.3 for non-HCSS contractors, a 15% difference to their advantage.
Leaving Less Money on the Table
Those same users who were the low bid in May left an average of 7.5% on the table compared to the 8.6% for contractors without HCSS, an almost 12% advantage for those leveraging HeavyBid as their primary bidding tool.
Contractors using HCSS submitted bids for projects totaling $3.4 billion. HCSS customers were the winning bidder for $2.1 billion (a little over 60%).
There is a mantra HCSS stands by: bid more, win more. The evidence is undeniable too. Contractors using HCSS are bidding on more projects, winning those projects, and, very importantly, they’re winning those projects with a bid that means more money is going into their business.
Job Costing After the Bid is Won
The magic doesn’t stop with HeavyBid either. After bids are won, using a construction job costing solution like HeavyJob helps project managers and other key stakeholders, such as owners and foremen, to better control the actual costs of a construction project by providing instant job data from anywhere as the project progresses from start to finish.
