“Bottom line – Ledgerwood Associates and Sage Timberline Office gave us power we didn’t have before and put us on a par with larger companies.” David Waltham, President, Coyote Development

Strategic alliances and technology improvements can help smaller construction companies compete more effectively. Read how this company used collaboration and new software to get more work.

Marketing Strategy Requires Collaboration

Coyote Development’s marketing strategy was to develop a strong relationship with larger companies who would recommend them on their big projects. This strategy required that they share information and reports with their larger partners. Their QuickBooks software was not up to the task. Coyote wanted a more reliable and construction oriented system with job cost reporting that would let them get the numbers quickly to the lead contractor’s office.

Sage Timberline Office

In September, 2010 Coyote Development worked with Ledgerwood Associates to install Sage Timberline
Office including job cost accounting, estimating and the core accounting modules. Ledgerwood Associates was involved with every aspect of the set up and conversion, including Coyote’s jobs listing (100 jobs), account structure, and beginning balances. The owner and lead estimator were trained on using cost
databases and how to transfer their estimates into job costing.

New Capabilities Win New Business

Coyote has landed several big projects since Ledgerwood Associates got them going on Timberline Office and Estimating. It’s much easier for them to demonstrate their capabilities to larger companies.

David Waltham, President of Coyote Development summarized the effect on their business, “Bottom line – Ledgerwood Associates and Sage Timberline Office gave us power we didn’t have before and put us on a par with larger companies.”

Company Profile

Coyote Development, a project oriented Arizona general contractor, builds a variety of government and
commercial projects in Arizona, Nevada and the Southwest. Focusing on technology improvement and streamlining the bid process has helped Coyote put together a string of successful projects resulting in consistent growth in a difficult economy.

What other ways of collaborating have brought you more business?

Mobile devices are on everybody’s minds these days. Here’s an interesting case study about how one construction company is profiting from the technology.

“Thanks to mobile data collection devices and services provided by True Wireless, we know where our workers are and what they are doing at all times, enabling us to pay and invoice more accurately, route and dispatch more efficiently, and to more successfully control costs. Simply put, True Wireless gives us a tremendous competitive advantage.” Paula Wiens, Controller at R&J Construction

R&J Construction realizes significant cost savings while improving productivity and customer service by deploying integrated mobile data collection and payroll technologies from True Wireless.

Situation
R&J Construction is an award-winning custom building company, well known for providing superior service and high-quality craftsmanship at a competitive price. Key to maintaining this reputation is R&J’s ability to automate critical business processes, such as mobile worker management and payroll administration.

Challenge
Improve the time-intensive and inexact process of recording worker timesheet, project status and vehicle mileage information. Also, gain the ability to respond to emergency situations by knowing the whereabouts of field workers at all times.

Solution
R&J deployed a GPS mobile workforce management solution from True Wireless, along with the ezLaborManager payroll solution from ADP. GPS time and tracking information is transmitted wirelessly and automatically to the ADP ezLaborManager system.

As a result, R&J knows in real-time precisely how many hours each worker is on a job and what projects he is performing. Workers choose a customer job number, then select the type of work they are doing such as framing a wall or interior trim work and can also enter job details. Both the GPS and ezLabor-Manager are web-based hosted solutions providing anywhere anytime access and minimizing maintenance costs. The GPS application and ezLaborManager work together “out-of-the-box,” so deploying the solutions was fast and easy for R&J.

Benefits

Billable Time Increased by 12 Hours per Week
Elimination of paper-based timesheet and project status recording along with improved accuracy and worker accountability creates an impressive 12 hours of additional billable time each week per worker.

Mileage Reimbursement Costs Cut $6,000 per Month
Improved vehicle mileage tracking, job-costing and worker performance reporting has reduced R&J’s vehicle mileage reimbursement costs by $6,000 per month.

More Precise Job Estimates
More accurate Job-costing allows for more precise job estimates.

Improved Customer Service
Enhanced mobile worker location tracking has improved customer service.

What has been your experience with mobile data collection devices?

For more information on construction technology visit www.ledgerwoodassociatesusa.com

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” your estimator says. “The bad news is we got the bid.”  “Then, what’s the good news?” you say. “We’ll only lose $10,000 on it,” says the estimator.

Underestimating a project or losing bids by overestimating can seriously erode profits. Too often these problems are caused by errors in spreadsheets. A 2004 PricewaterhouseCoopers study shows that up to 91 percent of sophisticated spreadsheets contain errors. A 2007 study concludes the error rate is 94%.

That sounds about right considering how often I find errors in my own spreadsheets. We’d all like to be error free. Knowing the sources of spreadsheet errors may be helpful in eliminating them.

Ten common errors or problems with estimating spreadsheets:

1. Hardcoding your values in the spreadsheet formulas resulting in right this month and wrong forever
2. Adding rows or columns that don’t get included in the range of the sum, subtotal and average functions
3. Losing unsaved changes due to interruptions
4. Data entry errors such as skipped entries or transposed numbers
5. Saving “what if” changes over the Excel worksheet you want to keep
6. Formula errors like parentheses errors in a mathematical formula; formulas pasted over with constants; or formulas no longer calculating properly when you delete an item
7. A bad query copied into a spreadsheet
8. A bad sort that destroys the integrity of a row
9. Old spreadsheet errors copied over and over again
10. Maintaining a number of templates for specific types of projects, which multiplies the risks of data entry errors, omissions, transposed numbers, and outdated pricing

One way to reduce the number of spreadsheet errors is to limit access to files or locking certain cells. You may also want to implement quality-control procedures for catching data entry errors in spreadsheets, including input controls, validation, and cross-footing.

An example of an input control is reconciling the data entered into the spreadsheet to the source records. A common sense suggestion is to separate the data entry and formula areas on a spreadsheet.

Finally, it’s a good idea to have the logic of the formulas within the spreadsheet inspected by someone other than the user or developer of the spreadsheet.

What do you do in your company to prevent spreadsheet errors?

Call Ledgerwood Associates today for a free consultation on how to improve your estimating speed and accuracy. 877-918-8301

Here’s a discussion of why keeping estimating processes consistent across multiple estimators is beneficial, from Sage CRE.

Impact
INCONSISTENCY:  Our estimators take great pride in their work and like to do things their own way.  Unfortunately, when everyone is using different tools and methods for estimating, it makes final review and the ability to reuse historical estimates for new projects we’re bidding difficult – not to mention risky.

LOSS OF EXPERTISE, KNOWLEDGE:  If we were to lose an estimator, the loss of their expertise and knowledge would put us at a considerable risk because we have no method for capturing and documenting what they know and use in their estimating processes.

Capabilities
Adopting a construction-specific estimating tool will streamline and automate the entire process and also help to build historical information that can be used again and again in future estimates.   

Solution
By having all your estimators using the same tool, you will have consistency across your estimating team.

What is your experience with estimators using their own preferred tools?

For additional information about this and other topics visit www.ledgerwoodassociatesusa.com