I'm interested to know how many of y'all who are working on construction projects (civil, commercial, residential, etc.) use some form of production tracking software. I know of a few out there, namely Procore and Viewpoint that have a good layout and operation. For those that have used either or both, or even another product altogether, can you give me some pros & cons? Our company leaves each project to its own devices, and for the most part we have a disjointed system of reporting and tracking.

I have never used a centralized product for tracking, just spreadsheet after spreadsheet that are just not as interactive as I need. I know these programs are not cheap, but I want to believe I can make a case for at least trying this stuff out if I am well-informed.

What do y'all say?

Look at a product called Wrike.
We implemented it here at the office about 9 months ago or so. So far it's made a world of difference it accountability and collaboration.

Whoop coo ca choo

-Primavera for scheduling
-Spectrum for CO, labor hours, PO, etc tracking
-Accubid for estimating and budgeting
-Tool Watch to track well, tools/equipment/etc

And I use excel sheets to track other various things

[This message has been edited by big ben (edited 6/21/2012 11:16a).]

We use Timberline, but it's not the best in the world for what we do.

Primavera (and all of it's bolt on programs) is probably the best, but even for production tracking I've never used it. My last company used a program called Forefront, and learning how to use it sucked balls. But, once you got it figured out, it wasn't too bad.

Spreadsheets for production are usually about as good as anything - the biggest thing is that I've never understood how a company cannot have something as important as this uniform across all projects.

schmellba,

That's where I'm at right now. We use Primavera for scheduling, but pretty much everything else is its own independent system of processing. For example, if I'm pouring a bridge deck, I have to look up the plans, order materials, process invoices, schedule the pour, and track its progress all on separate spreadsheets. It's annoying at best, and it opens up a multitude of opportunities for something to slip through the cracks or be forgotten.

I'm generally a very organized person, but everyone gets inundated and loses track of something at one point or another. As large as the company I work for is, I thought they would take hints from their competitors' success and adopt one of these tracking systems. Sometimes the lack of insight is just offensive. But hey, that's construction I guess.

I know the feeling. Way back when I was but a green lad still wet behind the ears, I had it in my head I wanted to work true industrial (I only consider what I do now half industrial), so I hired on with Austin Industrial.

They are a huge outfit - between the three companies, well over a billion a year (and that was 15 years ago).

To my surprise - they had no formal system of project management, so every project was a case of re-inventing the wheel. Talk about completely and utterly frustrating - especially when you were pulled from one job and sent to another, because your learning curve was generally a couple of weeks long instead of a couple of days long.

But hey, they made a lot of money and my ignorant greehorn comments were made out of youth and inexperience, so whatever works for them.

Well dammit, that's pretty much my situation. I prefer not to mention my company's name, but we are the exact same way. I almost hired on with Austin B&R, but my company was able to find me a place in DFW after my internships and graduation. I'm grateful for that, but "reinventing the wheel" is exactly how I feel. After a year and a half, I was moved to a new project, and I experienced the learning curve fallout first hand. There is a unified financial reporting system across all jobs, so I guess it's just my naivete speaking when I say it would make sense to AT LEAST have unified tracking.

Ugh.

Wow, each project decides what software the team wants to use?

We aren't big enough nor have enough self-performed work to justify software for production tracking in the field. We do use Primavera for scheduling and Sage MasterBuilder (now Sage 100 Contractor) that integrates budgets to subcontracts to payroll to accounting. It has been fantastic so far. I use Excel for project logs and Excel with a BidPoint add-in for all the estimating.

Google a guy named James Adrian, professor at Bradley University. I took a PM course back in '06 and the guy was an expert at construction productivity and enhancing process efficiency, like down to using a stopwatch and video camera while wrecking and placing gang forms. He wrote a handful of the textbooks used in COSC.

My biggest thing is not using Excel for something like submittals and RFI's. I've seen more FUBAR's from that than anything else.

ConstructionAg,

It's to the point that we don't even have tracking software. When I was an intern, the project used Primavera for document tracking (RFI's, CO's, Submittals, etc.), but the actual quantities and progress was all just a cluster of spreadsheets. Don't get me wrong, nothing beats a well-thought-out spreadsheet, but the hours that go into searching for information or turning that information into useful figures for higher-ups seems a bit excessive.

How many construction ags regret going into construction?

+1

I don't want to say who I work for in this thread, but let's say it's "commercial" and it's related to a couple other companies mentioned in this thread.

For certain items the PM is free to decide which software to use, but the generally accepted and widely used programs are:

CMiC (non-negotiable) - Job Costs, Budgeting, RFI's, Submittals, Performance Tracking, Meeting Minutes, Change Orders, etc. We used to use Prolog for this but over the years since I've been here we've slowly moved away from Prolog.

Primavera - Scheduling. Some of us have Microsoft Project that we use for scheduling, but our schedulers all use P6.

VELA - QC, punch lists & commissioning.

NavisWorks - BIM modeling

Not sure what we use for estimating since I've never worked in our estimating department. What I use most is Microft Excel, Word and Outlook.

Not me. I love putting something tangible in place that you can show your wife or kids, especially now that I live in a small town and drive by past projects every day. Many of the completed projects benefit the community and make people's lives better. Now I'm into selling work and building relationships so that adds to the enjoyment as well.

Yes, bad subs, owners who are either crooked or ignorant of the process or both, and elitist architects can make for bad days.

We use Jonas. I'm working towards sales so I haven't learned it yet but it seems to do just about everything we need.

Thanks for the multiple responses, guys.

Does anyone have an estimated cost of these programs? I know training is involved, probably licensing for the company etc., but I'm looking to at least recommend a trial implementation on a project so that the big bosses can decide whether or not we can use it.

Also, has anyone used more than one? Is there any online resource where I can find a comparison between them?

Bump for those of us getting off work.

We use Timberline for accounting, estimating, contracts, change orders, RFI, submittals, transmittals, cost reporting, meeting minutes.

I use Project for scheduling unless contractually required to use Suretrack.

I use excell for tracking CPRs, call logs, delivery dates and other misc spreadsheets.

Hoss,

How is vela? We are looking into it and I like what it offers but considering I only see a few of our PMs using it I am not sure it is worth the cost.

We use it extensively for quality control / punch lists and it works great for that. The project I'm on now is the first in the company to use it for commissioning and I'm not sold yet. At least not for this particular owner who has very strict cx requirements.

I forgot safety. We use DBO2 for safety. Works great.

Hoss - we work for the same company. I'm guessing you work in Dallas?

And my review of vela is slightly less positive, though much of my disgust for the program was actually for the hardware we used it on. Also, we were using a fairly early version of it and I haven't had a chance to play with it lately on an ipad.

And both of you legends. I guess with an 800 man staff you have time to **** off.

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Hoss - we work for the same company. I'm guessing you work in Dallas?

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Well crap. THAT is why I didn't want to say who I work for. Now I'm trying to figure out who you are. I assume you're in Dallas since you threw that out there.

We use a proprietary program in addition to Primavera. Feel free to send me an email, I'd be happy to send you one of our project managers if you need him for a few weeks.

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How many construction ags regret going into construction?

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Not at all, but I did get tired of the paperwork and other BS that comes with working for a GC so I went to a large sub.

love this business. Thankfully, I do energy related construction so we are.busy

Seen construction from the engineer, supplier, and commissioning agent angle. Nothing is100%. It always comes down to the person doing the work. Not the company or the program used. My $.02.

We have an in-house program that allows us to track our quantities seperate from our main prehistoric cost software. We are responsible for tracking and entering progress daily within the in-house program. Then we marry the systems together to make it official. It is a very tedious process that allows for extremely accurate reporting. That's assuming the info being put in is accurate. Our system allows us to dump templates into excel. With the filter option on excel, we have found that we can perform precise reporting per any category defined daily. It works well, but due to the time consuming process we have been searching for a more modern approach. Last year we were supposedly reaching out to software developers to improve the process. Nothing has changed yet. Each project develops excel spreadsheets seperate from our software to produce daily reporting. If you spend the time to create a good database in an excel spreadsheet you can really achieve successful tracking of progress. Unfortunately we then have to reproduce our tracking results with our in-house software, then link it to the official record keeping software. At the end of the day it is a great check and balance process, but time consuming to learn and execute. We self perform most of our work, so it is important to have good reporting. If you can execute V Lookups and Sum Ifs from a bank of production and cost info you can accomplish a lot. Like I said though, you have to spend the time creating it. I input info into monster spreadsheets daily! I have no clue how our software was written, but it is obviously derived from excel. We schedule with P6 and utilize Contract Manager for correspondence such as RFIs and Submittals. I am anxiously waiting for our new approach to be implemented for sure. My company is definitely a major player in civil construction as well. I'm sure our financial resources are a big reason why we have the programs we do though.

I agree 100% with the poster who said it depends on the person. At the end of the day, it's getting your guys to perform quality work at their lowest cost. If you want to make money you'll find a way to figure out the best method for reporting. In my somewhat brief career in the industry I have learned that experience is key to staying accurate and effecient at the same time. But there is no doubt it takes effort.

Another important factor is the way budgets are broke down for work activities. Beginning at the bid level, we have very detailed activities with specific budgets that allow us to chop up tracking. For example the activity of completing a deck pour would consist of several specific work activities from setting beams to removing cure blankets. This allows for detailed reporting and the activities are already defined at the bid level.

[This message has been edited by OlRock (edited 6/24/2012 12:30a).]

Vela is not very good. They still have a lot of work to do on the software.

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Well crap. THAT is why I didn't want to say who I work for. Now I'm trying to figure out who you are. I assume you're in Dallas since you threw that out there.

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Not in Dallas, I just assumed you were since I know the handles of the Ags that work with me.

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And both of you legends. I guess with an 800 man staff you have time to **** off.

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It only took me 6 years to get that 'L' tag. And yes, I include a line item for TA time in my GC's.

Nice Aggietaco!

Thanks for the input folks. We are a pretty large company, so I doubt any widespread action will be implemented globally. I was just looking to see if one or more of these systems would be worth looking into.

I have my myriad spreadsheets with sumifs, filters, tabs upon tabs upon tabs, etc. I don't think there's any one solution that will work best for us, but the rate at which work is picking up is starting to raise my blood pressure a little bit. Trying to take a proactive approach so that our team doesn't drown when production is wide open. I think the big bosses' policy is to see what we do without before seeing what we can do with.

I work for a heavy highway construction company. We use Viewpoint for Accounting and production quantities. We do a lot of asphalt and aggregate producing. As far as scheduling P6, Microsoft Project, or even suretrack is fine. None of them work seamlessly with our bidding software anyway. We use HCSS - Heavybid for estimating & bidding. I highly recommend you look into HCSS. They are based out of Houston and are excellent in customer service. They have Heavybid for bidding, then Heavyjob for project mgmt, which seems like what you are looking for. And they flow seamlessly between each other. They also have a few other products but I don't use them.

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Not in Dallas, I just assumed you were since I know the handles of the Ags that work with me.

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Interesting. Though I guess I'm not too surprised, I never really considered that there might be a bunch of Commercial folks browsing the boards. I'll have to remember that when I'm freely sharing my thoughts and opinions around here.

How many Ags do we have in Austin (assuming Austin...per your profile)? I know we have a lot in Dallas and a few in Houston.