Among tight margins, competitive timelines, and high-volume opportunities, managing the bid process can feel like a full-time job (or several!). But in commercial construction, success comes down to the bids you win. Or, more accurately, the systems and strategy behind your bidding that help you increase your bid rate.
Continue reading “How TopBuilder Helped Hatzel & Buehler Increase Their Bid Rate by 28%”
It’s no secret that margins can be thin in construction. Missed bids, idle labor, or even a single estimating error can eat into your profits. Small inefficiencies truly can add up to big consequences. That’s why tracking the right metrics with construction dashboards accurately and consistently is essential for running a more efficient, profitable business.
Yet many contractors still rely on spreadsheets, manual reports, and disconnected tools that only offer a partial view of their company’s performance. Without visibility into your data, it’s easy to get stuck making reactive decisions.
And that can lead to:
Here are seven key construction metrics that are too important to ignore and what it could be costing you if you do.
If you can’t track which types of projects are bringing in the most profitable jobs, you’re missing a critical opportunity to focus your efforts. Without job-level insights, you may end up chasing work that looks good on paper but delivers little ROI in the end.
The cost: Wasted time on low-margin jobs, recurring cost overruns, and missed opportunities to double down on more profitable markets.
Are you bidding on the right projects? Are your proposals competitive? Without a clear view of how many bids convert and why others don’t, knowing where to focus your efforts is more guesswork than science.
The cost: Submitting bids with low win rates, losing work to competitors, and wasting time on bids that aren’t a good fit.
A strong backlog is good. A well-balanced pipeline is better. But if you aren’t tracking new leads, bid submissions, and projected close dates, it’s significantly harder to see slowdowns coming or plan for growth.
The cost: Unexpected revenue gaps, overstaffing or understaffing, poor resource planning, and difficulty forecasting cash flow.
Do you have the crews you need lined up for next quarter? Are you underutilizing your current labor force? Without insight into labor forecasts and workload distribution, you risk underperformance or overpromising.
The cost: Idle labor, overtime costs, project delays, and missed deadlines.
Your job budget was solid but now you’re halfway through and costs are already off track. Tracking budget-to-actuals and cost variances in real time gives you a chance to course-correct before it’s too late.
The cost: Runaway costs, inaccurate forecasts, and reduced job profitability.
How long have your leads been sitting untouched? Which sales rep or estimator needs to follow up? Without visibility into lead activity and pipeline aging, you risk letting valuable opportunities go cold.
The cost: Slowed sales cycles, lost deals, and poor accountability across teams.
Are your marketing campaigns generating leads or just draining your budget? If you’re not measuring engagement by source or campaign, it can be hard to know what’s working and where to invest.
The cost: Wasted marketing spend, weak lead quality, and misaligned sales efforts.
These seven metrics aren’t just nice to track. They’re essential to building a healthier business. But if your data is scattered across spreadsheets, disconnected software, or manual reports, you may find yourself a step behind.
That’s where ContractorBI™ comes in. ContractorBI™ is a comprehensive business intelligence solution built specifically for contractors with dozens of prebuilt, interactive dashboards that give you and your team the real-time insights needed to monitor performance, spot risks, and drive profitability.
ContractorBI™ helps you take control of the metrics that matter, with dashboards including:
And that’s just the beginning.
With ContractorBI™, data becomes actionable. Every dashboard is built with construction use cases in mind so your team can focus on what matters most.
Spreadsheets and disconnected reports can’t give you the real-time answers you need. They can’t forecast delays, flag profitability risks, or optimize your pipeline. And they certainly can’t help your team collaborate across departments with a shared view of performance.
ContractorBI™ changes all of that. It’s not just about collecting data. It’s about using it to make smarter decisions, faster. Connect with TopBuilder so you can see how ContractorBI™ dashboards can help you.
When you think about CRM software, sales and marketing likely come to mind first. But if you’re a CFO or part of the finance team, there’s a much bigger picture. The truth is, a CRM for finance can be one of the most powerful assets in your toolbox.
When equipped with business intelligence and real-time dashboards, a construction-specific CRM can help you track job profitability, forecast revenue, and plan your company’s financial future with far more precision. Continue reading “Construction CRM for the Finance Team: Why CFOs Struggle With Visibility and How To Fix It”
Speed and accuracy in quoting can make the difference between winning a construction project or losing it to the competition. Manual processes are slow and error-prone, increasing your odds of letting opportunities slip away.
If your team is still spending hours copying numbers from spreadsheets, double-checking prices, or conducting ad hoc follow-up on proposals, the reality is that you’re wasting valuable time that could be better spent elsewhere. Like on winning more bids.
And even when quotes go out the door, they may not look as professional as you hoped which can hurt your credibility with potential clients. Worse yet, they may lack the critical details project owners expect, like scope of work, job photos, specs, and standard agreements.
So, how do you close deals faster and make a stronger impression? With construction quoting software that automates the process, supports complete documentation, and produces polished, professional proposals every time.
Contractors historically relied on spreadsheets, email chains, and even pad-and-paper-level manual processes to create quotes. In fact, many contractors still do.
And while these methods may have worked in the past, they come with a number of downsides.
Quoting often involves pulling information from multiple sources including spreadsheets, emails, and even handwritten notes. And it can take hours (or days!) to gather all supply costs, estimate labor, and format proposals manually.
Compare that to using TopBuilder’s Construction CRM, that helps contractors quote five times faster!
A single pricing mistake, whether due to outdated data or a simple typo, can result in lost revenue, reduced profit margins, or even disputes down the line. And with manual quoting, there is added room for error compared to a system that automatically syncs with your estimating and accounting tools.
Even if the numbers are right, proposals can often fall short in presentation. Generic formats, missing details, or clunky attachments can give the impression of disorganization. Without the ability to include specs, photos, scope of work, or standard documents, quotes can feel incomplete and less compelling to potential clients. With TopBuilder, your team can send professional, branded proposals with all the relevant materials in one polished package.
Once a proposal is sent, tracking its status can be difficult. Did the client receive it? Have they reviewed it? When should you follow up?
Without a structured workflow, opportunities can slip through the cracks – and that means you may be missing out on deals simply because there wasn’t follow-up at the right time.
For many contractors, their quoting process exists in isolation from other business functions because there’s no way to integrate it. That means they’re manually re-entering data into their estimating software and accounting systems – wasting time and increasing the risk of misalignment. And that creates inefficiencies that can ripple across the business.
TopBuilder’s quoting capabilities are designed to eliminate all these challenges and more by automating, organizing, and integrating every step of the process. Here’s how.
Rather than building every quote from scratch, TopBuilder’s quoting software integrates with Excel and estimating tools to pull in pricing, materials, and labor costs instantly. This means you can:
Instead of spending hours formatting and compiling numbers, you can generate accurate, professional proposals with just a few clicks.
Automated quoting tools like TopBuilder help eliminate the risk of errors from outdated cost data or manual miscalculations by ensuring that:
A slow approval process can mean lost opportunities. Instead of waiting for clients to print, sign, and scan documents, TopBuilder provides:
Keeping track of quotes, revisions, and project details isn’t easy – especially when the information is all stored in different locations. TopBuilder centralizes everything so your team can:
Organizing all your proposal-related data in one place saves you time, reduces the risk of miscommunication, and makes team-wide collaboration easier.
Speed and accuracy in quoting are only part of the equation. To truly optimize your sales process, you need data and instant insights to understand which bids are working – and why.
That’s where ContractorBI™, TopBuilder’s suite of business intelligence dashboards, comes in. By integrating your quoting data with real-time bid performance tracking, you can:
With TopBuilder and ContractorBI™, you’re not just sending out quotes faster. You’re making smarter decisions that improve win rates, profitability, and long-term growth.
Speed and accuracy matter. Taking too long to create and send a quote means the client may move forward with a competitor before they even have the chance to review your proposal.
Contractors who use TopBuilder see immediate returns, including generating proposals 75% faster and seeing a 10% increase in deal closures – simply by optimizing how they create, send, and track proposals.
As one plumbing contractor who uses TopBuilder said, “We used to spend two weeks preparing a single bid. Now it takes two hours.”
See how TopBuilder can transform your quoting process and win more bids, faster. Connect with us today for a short demo!
Explore the importance of accurate construction forecasting, the risks of limited forecasting, and how ContractorBI™ helps you take control of your future success.
Construction forecasting isn’t just estimating costs. It’s about making smarter, more strategic decisions to keep your projects on schedule, your revenue streams steady, and your resources properly allocated. Yet many contractors only forecast for active jobs, missing a critical piece of the puzzle: bids and future workload projections.
Why is this a problem? It leaves future workloads uncertain and potential bottlenecks unseen. Without including bid data in forecasts, you risk making hiring, purchasing, and scheduling decisions without the fullest picture. And that makes it difficult to accurately plan for growth, workforce needs, or potential slowdowns.
This is where ContractorBI™ transforms forecasting: bringing together job cost accounting, project management, estimating, CRM, inventory, and bidding data into one platform with business intelligence dashboards designed specifically for contractors. And by leveraging AI, machine learning, and market trends, it delivers predictive analytics for the most accurate forecasts possible.
Let’s explore the importance of accurate construction forecasting, the risks of limited forecasting, and how ContractorBI™ helps you take control of your future success.
In construction, predicting labor and resource needs is essential for profitability. But many companies still struggle with forecasting accuracy, leading to last-minute staffing changes, unanticipated costs, and revenue disruptions.
Let’s take a closer look at why construction forecasting is crucial and what happens when it’s not done correctly.
A workforce shortage can delay projects, increase overtime costs, and force contractors to hire expensive subcontractors at the last minute.
For example, let’s say a contractor only forecasts for active jobs and assumes their crews will be busy for the next three months. But bid losses cause a sudden gap in scheduled work, leaving workers idle and revenue stalled. Without forecasting labor needs ahead of time, they failed to adjust their hiring strategy.
How to fix it:
Cash flow is one of the biggest financial challenges in construction, with contractors constantly balancing invoices, expenses, unpredictable payments, and ensuring cash flow will support project commitments.
Let’s look at an example where a general contractor secured several large projects but didn’t forecast revenue dips between phases. As a result, his company found itself short on funds when waiting for milestone payments, leading to delayed subcontractor payments and strained relationships.
How to fix it:
Without an effective forecasting system, it’s easy to accept too many projects at once, which can lead to resource strain and costly project delays. On the other hand, not bidding aggressively enough may leave revenue gaps and underutilized crews.
As one example, a specialty contractor didn’t track win/loss rates or bid performance trends. Instead, they just assumed they needed to submit more bids. However, their data revealed they were actually losing jobs due to poor pricing strategy – and not a lack of opportunities.
How to fix it:
Many contractors rely on systems like Procore or ERP tools to forecast workforce needs and financial performance. While these tools provide valuable insights into active projects, they don’t provide a complete forecasting solution by themselves.
Unlike traditional forecasting methods, ContractorBI™ integrates bidding, project management, and financial data to create a more accurate forecasting model. This gives you a complete, 360-degree view of your company’s future. ContractorBI™ also employs predictive analytics utilizing generative AI/ML to factor in market conditions and predictive models to prepare the most accurate forecast possible
There are three main parts to this.
Most contractors only forecast labor needs for projects already in progress, but ContractorBI™ accounts for future work in the bidding stage.
Without a clear forecasting system, many contractors struggle to anticipate revenue fluctuation, which can lead to unexpected cash flow problems.
To make the most informed decisions, you need real-time visibility into key performance indicators.
When forecasting is done right, you don’t just react to changes: You stay ahead of them.
See how ContractorBI can transform your forecasting process. Schedule a demo today.
Tracking construction sales performance isn’t just about closing more deals – it’s about winning the right projects and improving overall profitability. But without clear insights, specialty contractors risk chasing bad bids, misallocating resources, or failing to identify revenue leaks.
Without the right tools, those insights don’t come easily. Manually tracking bid performance, sales activity, and forecasting future work can be overwhelming – especially when that data is scattered across spreadsheets, emails, and other disconnected sources.
That’s where ContractorBI comes in. Designed specifically for construction sales and bid management, ContractorBI allows contractors to visualize sales and bid performance in real-time. Instead of relying on gut instinct or outdated information, contractors can make data-driven decisions that improve win rates and profitability.
Let’s explore the key sales metrics that every specialty contractor should be tracking – and how ContractorBI makes it easy to do so.
Winning projects is the goal – but how often are you landing the jobs you bid on? Your bid win rate tells you how successful you are at securing work and is an indicator of your business’ health. A low win rate can signal pricing issues, poor bid targeting, or an ineffective sales strategy. Likewise, a sudden drop in your win rate warrants further investigation.
With ContractorBI, you can track won/lost bids by job type, customer, estimator, industry, division/territory, bid source, project size, and sales rep, helping you refine your bidding strategy. Past performance isn’t a guarantee for future success, but it does give you important data that can be used to identify opportunities and make adjustments to improve success rates.
In a similar vein, your bid conversion rate measures the percentage of bids that turn into awarded jobs. A high conversion rate means that you’re focusing on the right winnable bids instead of wasting time on long shots.
ContractorBI allows you to monitor bid volume, awarded jobs, and lost opportunities all in one place so you can better pinpoint trends and better understand why some bids convert while others don’t.
If you notice that one general contractor consistently awards you projects at a 20% higher rate, for instance, that’s a strong indicator to prioritize working with them in the future.
Keeping your pipeline full is key to maintaining steady revenue. Track new leads, bids submitted, and awarded jobs to better anticipate future workload and prevent gaps in your schedule.
ContractorBI provides real-time visibility into your sales pipeline, so you can identify slow periods ahead of time and take proactive steps. If your revenue forecast shows a drop-off in the coming quarters, for example, you can start ramping up bidding efforts now to fill the gap.
Understanding why you lost a bid is just as important as knowing why you won one. Lost bid analysis helps you identify patterns and uncover the most significant factors that impact your success rate.
With ContractorBI, you can track the top reasons for lost bids – whether it’s due to pricing, competition, scope mismatch, or lack of follow-up. If you lost 30% of bids because of pricing, for instance, it may be time to re-evaluate your pricing strategy and identify any areas where costs can be reduced.
Not all projects are equal. Some will simply be more profitable than others for a range of reasons. Track profitability by job type and customer to focus your efforts on the most lucrative opportunities.
ContractorBI allows you to compare markup, profits, and revenue trends across different job types, customers, geographic areas, and markets. This insight can help you allocate your resources more effectively and guide your bidding decisions. If one type of customer consistently provides higher-margin projects, it may be worth investing more into that relationship instead of taking on lower-margin work elsewhere.
These five construction sales metrics matter, no matter how you track them. But when you rely on spreadsheets or manual tracking, you face having outdated and incomplete data to make decisions. Without real-time visibility, it’s much harder and more time-consuming to accurately predict future work, identify weak spots in your bidding process, or adjust your sales strategy to fluctuating market trends.
Success in construction sales isn’t just about bidding more—it’s about bidding smarter and tracking what actually works. With ContractorBI, you get the insights you need to make your data actionable.
Learn more about how ContractorBI can help your business grow by scheduling a conversation with us today.
For many people, Power BI is a helpful tool – it’s well-known, widely used, and even has a free version. But there’s a catch with using Power BI for construction projects: it wasn’t built for contractors like you.
That means more time spent on setup, customization, and troubleshooting just to make it work for your business. And the real cost? It’s not just the software (even if you use the free version). It’s the hidden expenses that add up over time, from manual data entry and disconnected systems to extensive training and scaling costs.
If you want real-time insights, seamless integrations, and pre-built dashboards designed for construction teams, there’s a better way. ContractorBI is built specifically for contractors – giving you the data you need, when you need it. Without the extra hassle.
Power BI is a blank slate. That might sound like a good thing – until you realize you’ll have to build everything from scratch.
That means you have:
That’s time and money spent before you even start using Power BI for your business.
ContractorBI comes pre-built for construction, with over 45 dashboards tailored especially to contractors’ needs. And it integrates with tools like Procore, Sage, and Stack, pulling real-time data into those dashboards – ready to use from day one, no expensive setup required.
Power BI isn’t a plug-and-play solution for contractors. And that means if your team isn’t already experienced with data analytics using the platform, it can be a steep learning curve to get the information you need.
Added to that is the fact that training isn’t a one-time cost. As your company grows and new employees onboard, you’ll need to continuously invest in training. On top of that, if only a handful of people at your company can pull reports or customize dashboards, decision-making slows down. Teams either wait on someone with Power BI expertise or work without real-time data, increasing the risk of costly mistakes.
With ContractorBI, there’s no coding required. Everything is ready at your fingertips to use immediately.
Instead of requiring complex coding languages and extensive manual set-ups, ContractorBI offers an intuitive, construction-specific interface where users can quickly access reports, track key metrics, and generate insights. Even better, live training and unlimited support from TopBuilder ensures your team can get up to speed quickly if you do encounter any roadblocks. Whether you need help with reports or making the most of your data, our team is available to assist every step of the way.
As a whole, this means you spend less time figuring out how to use the tool and more time using it – that is, making data-driven decisions that drive profitability and efficiency at your company.
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from those in our community who have used Power BI is around disconnected data silos.
Because Power BI isn’t built for construction, it doesn’t automatically pull in information from bid management, project tracking, or estimating tools. That means:
With ContractorBI, your data flows seamlessly between all your tools including Procore, Sage, B2W, Stack, and other construction software. That means no more manual updates – just real-time insights that help you stay ahead of the cost overruns, bidding trends, forecasting, and job performance.
Power BI pricing looks affordable at first glance but costs can add up with more advanced features. For instance, there’s a free version – but if you want to share and publish your reports, you need to pay to play with a license.
Plus, every user needs a separate license, adding up fast as your team grows. And, since Power BI is deeply integrated into Microsoft Azure, you’re all but forced to use Microsoft’s cloud solutions, especially if you need more advanced functionality.
ContractorBI is built to scale affordably for contractors. With transparent pricing, no surprise costs, and the ability to add features and users without breaking the bank, ContractorBI gives you the insights you need without breaking the bank.
Power BI may work for general businesses but, for contractors, it comes with hidden costs that add up quickly. From complex setup to limited construction integrations, it often creates more problems than it solves. Simply put, there’s a better solution for contractors.
See in greater detail how ContractorBI compares to Power BI. Download our full feature comparison chart to see why contractors are choosing a business intelligence tool built for their industry.
Guessing at your bottom line is never a good idea. You might think a project went perfectly, but your profit margin was razor thin, or even in the red. Or maybe it seemed like everything that could go wrong did go wrong, but it didn’t have as much of a financial impact as you feared.
Monitoring project margins isn’t just good practice, it’s essential for identifying profit leaks and securing long-term profitability. With a construction software tool like TopBuilder and ContractorBI™, featuring powerful analytics and reporting features, you can streamline this process and focus on boosting your business.
Let’s explore why profit margins are so important and how technology can help you identify losses and capitalize on opportunities.
Building projects have high stakes and thin profit margins everywhere. In the U.S., for instance, they hover around a slim five percent on average. With rising costs for labor and materials, even a slight misstep in estimates or execution can lead to significant profit erosion. That’s why it’s important to identify and stop revenue leaks as quickly as possible.
But what exactly are revenue leaks? They are the hidden losses that drain from your business due to inefficiencies, errors, or overlooked details. They’re often subtle, compounding over time until they significantly impact your bottom line.
Common profit leaks in construction include:
Dealing with these issues can be tricky: the causes are not always obvious. But, with the right tools, you can not only fix the problem but end up in a better place than you expected.
Monitoring margins isn’t just about fixing issues – it’s about using insights to drive smarter practices and higher profits.
Construction software is a game-changer when it comes to understanding and protecting your profit margins.
TopBuilder consolidates data from sales, bidding, project management, and accounting into a single platform. This provides a comprehensive view of where your profits are coming from—and where they’re leaking.
When you can track ongoing project performance against initial estimates, you can address potential issues before they escalate. Business intelligence dashboards like those in ContractorBI allow you to compare actuals to estimates, keeping you informed at every stage of the project.
Analytics can uncover trends and highlight areas for improvement, such as underperforming job types or inefficiencies. ContractorBI provides visibility across key parameters and lets you pinpoint what is working and what needs immediate attention. It also goes a step further by identifying hidden opportunities (revenue gaps) to maximize your margins.
If you want to plug a leak, you have to know where it is. With ContractorBI, you can quickly pinpoint problems and take action.
ContractorBI’s dashboards let you analyze performance by sales agent, job type, lead source, and more. For example, if you notice that projects from a specific lead source consistently underperform, you can revisit your bidding strategy to address the issue before it impacts your bottom line further. Stopping a leak is great, but it’s even better to prevent it in the first place.
Use job cost performance reporting to spot revenue and profit leaks during construction.
Suppose you are three months into a six-month build and mid-project labor costs exceed estimates by 10%. Data-driven insights allow you to dig deeper into what’s causing the overages – whether it’s higher-than-expected overtime, unexpected delays, or increased material costs. It can be challenging to make adjustments to mitigating factors like these, but having real-time data gives you power over your next steps – so you can quickly respond to minimize further impact and keep the project on track.
Revenue leaks aren’t always about losses – they can also represent missed opportunities.
ContractorBI helps you spot revenue gaps that can signal untapped opportunities, such as underutilized teams or overlooked markets. For instance, you might discover a specific area is consistently delivering profitable projects but has fewer bids submitted. Knowing where to bid is often as savvy as how to bid!
In project management, a proactive approach beats reactive management every time.
The proactive business owner or contractor makes decisions and plans based on a clearly defined goal and is always looking for new opportunities. The reactive one waits for a problem to come up, or is too busy to take time to address matters before they become problems, and then deals with it the best they can. The right tools give you the insights needed to anticipate issues and make informed, proactive decisions.
All these advantages let you focus on closing revenue gaps and optimizing operations within your specialty. This could mean improving resource allocation for specific job types, expanding on the geographic areas you serve, or capitalizing on trends within your area of expertise to secure more lucrative opportunities.
Profit leaks are a silent threat, but with TopBuilder, they’re not insurmountable. Contact us today to take control of your profit margins and identify hidden opportunities.
Let’s face it: the process for contractor bidding can be overwhelming. It’s complex, time-consuming, and full of opportunities for things to go awry. From juggling deadlines to estimating costs, even the most experienced contractor can make mistakes. And in a competitive market, even a single misstep – like missing a deadline or submitting incomplete documentation – can mean losing out on a lucrative contract, saying nothing of sustaining long-term growth, securing steady work for you and your crews, and maintaining your reputation in the field.
Fortunately, many of these mistakes are avoidable. Here are the five most frequent bidding pitfalls, how they hurt your business, and – most importantly – how you can avoid them. Turn the bidding process from a stressor into a growth driver by recognizing and addressing potential bidding blunders early, transforming them into opportunities.
Chaos has casualties on all fronts. In searching for bids, you’ll waste time skimming different websites and disconnected systems, which usually means lost leads. Using multiple platforms also requires more manual data entry, which leads to an increased chance of data entry errors.
Nothing stifles a successful bid more than telling your potential client the price is $12,000 instead of the $1,200 that was on the bid you sent them. Mistakes like this can seriously damage your reputation. The lack of a centralized location to track bid invitations and submissions can have a significant impact on both the bidding process and your chances of success.
Incomplete documentation leads to a host of problems.
At the start of the process, submitting bids without the necessary supporting documents, like scope details or certifications, can lead to disqualification out of the gate. And, if you do make it through the start of the process, without proper documentation, you may be left guessing about some aspects of the project – leading to costly change orders, legal disputes, or safety risks.
For example, if you’re bidding on a project that involves electrical upgrades but don’t confirm the building’s current wiring capacity when submitting the bid, you might underestimate the complexity and cost of the work. This oversight could lead to unexpected delays or budget overruns.
With multiple bids and tight timelines, staying organized is a constant challenge. Poor tracking of submission dates or failing to complete a step in the bidding process can result in missed opportunities. The best-prepared and most competitive bid won’t matter if it’s late to the table.
A bid doesn’t always fail because of a typo or minor mistake – sometimes, the bid doesn’t fully address the bid requirements. Misinterpreting specifications or overlooking key details often results in inaccurate estimates or disqualified bids.
Take time to thoroughly review and address the project scope.
Bidding without evaluating past performance is like playing darts blindfolded. Without tracking what worked and what didn’t, you’re missing opportunities to improve. And this is where manual reports can be a problem.
Relying on spreadsheets or hand-written notes makes tracking a daunting task – time-consuming, error-prone, and lacking the real-time insights needed to refine your approach and drive better results.
These and other mistakes can have a major impact on your business and far-reaching consequences.
So, what can you do to avoid these problems? Let’s look at several strategies to help you manage bids more effectively and accurately:
Invest in a comprehensive system that consolidates bid opportunities, submissions, and statuses in one place. TopBuilder is construction software that gives you a 360-degree view of your business and integrates with your other tools, including Procore, Acumatica, Sage, and more.
Use automated workflows to track deadlines, assign tasks, and send follow-up reminders. With TopBuilder’s CRM, you’ll never miss a submission date.
Analyze bid data to refine estimates and avoid over-or under- bidding. ContractorBI’s benchmarking capabilities help you measure performance, analyze past trends and forecast more accurately.
Evaluate opportunities based on criteria like profitability and project fit. TopBuilder helps contractors focus on the bids most likely to succeed.
Track won/lost trends by job type, industry, estimator, and lead source to refine your strategy. ContractorBI offers in-depth bid performance dashboards for insights that allow you to refine your bidding strategy and improve outcomes.
The best business decisions don’t happen in a vacuum. They’re powered by accurate, actionable data and tools that empower smarter choices. That’s why contractors using advanced analytics are five times more likely to make faster decisions than their competitors and two times more likely to have top-quartile financial performance. Integrated dashboards eliminate the tedium of manually consolidating data, freeing up resources to focus on strategic efforts.
The right tech also means improved communication. TopBuilder ensures everyone on your team – from sales to project managers – aligns on bids and priorities. Leverage accurate revenue forecasting to combine bid data with historical job performance to predict workload and ensure a more balanced pipeline.
Bidding mistakes cost time and money, as well as opportunities to grow your business. By implementing best practices and leveraging tools like ContractorBI™, you can streamline your bid management, improve accuracy, and focus on winning the right projects.
Take control of your bidding process and secure more profitable contracts with the right tools for the job.
You just landed a contract for a major commercial development – an exciting opportunity but also a big step up from your typical construction project. The client wants an accurate cost estimate. You know how to estimate construction jobs, but this is different. With the project’s size and complexity, you’re worried that any figure you provide might be more guesswork than precision.
If you’ve ever experienced the consequences of a bad estimate, you know how critical accuracy is to profitability and success. Poor estimates can lead to cost overruns, missed deadlines, and damaged client relationships. In all, it’s a lot of direct costs to your construction business and adds stress to you.
So, what’s the solution? In this article, we’ll cover best practices for improving job estimates, monitoring actuals in real-time, and leveraging technology to stay on budget. Plus, we’ll show how ContractorBI makes it easier than ever to ensure your next construction job stays on budget and delivers the results your clients expect.
The construction industry is full of challenges, and estimating construction costs can be a major sticking point. An accurate construction estimate is crucial for setting the right expectations, securing financing, and achieving a project’s scope. Without it, construction companies like yours risk unexpected costs, diminished profit margins, and even project delays. Studies have also shown that management-related issues cause one-third of cost overruns – which means good planning could have avoided them.
Perhaps this is the first project of this scale your company has worked on, or material costs are fluctuating so fast you can’t pin down what they’ll be when you need them. Labor shortages also have a huge impact on development costs, which can blow up your budget. Then there’s always the potential for human error, complicating processes like this.
Contractors generally understand the importance of creating accurate estimates, but it can be a struggle for anyone to handle the detailed understanding needed to calculate overhead, unit costs, and additional potential costs for a particular project. For specialty contractors and general contractors alike, it’s essential to have the right tools and processes in place to generate more accurate estimates.
An accurate construction estimate begins with a clear and detailed understanding of the project. This includes reviewing site conditions, construction materials required, labor requirements, permit fees, and unit prices. As part of this process, compare the project’s scope to similar prior jobs to identify trends, potential challenges, and benchmarks for labor and material costs. A preliminary estimate is a good idea to outline initial project costs and refine them as more details become available.
Analyzing past projects is an important step in refining cost estimates and forecasting. Historical data can provide insights into labor hours, material costs, overhead expenses, and project performance trends. Use this information to help identify what worked, what didn’t, and where you can improve.
To make this process even more effective, match the current job’s scope to similar past projects based on job type, market segment, customer, past estimator, project manager, or building owner. ContractorBI excels in this area by allowing you to filter and analyze historical data using these specific parameters, enabling you to create highly relevant and accurate estimates tailored to your project.
However, when dealing with projects significantly different from your previous work or in fluctuating market conditions, historical data alone will not suffice by itself. In such cases, leverage real-time data and additional insights to fill in the gaps.
While historical data helps improve your process, it’s real-time data that keeps your current projects on track. Relying solely on past information can lead to estimates that don’t account for changing conditions, such as more expensive material prices or labor shortages.
Tools like ContractorBI also provide real-time data on labor hours, material usage, and subcontractor costs. These insights allow you to adapt quickly, preventing budget overruns and helping make sure your estimates align with current market conditions.
Throughout the project, compare the estimated cost against actual performance. Focus on key cost factors like labor hours, material usage, and unit costs. This ongoing review allows for adjustments that keep the project on track and within budget.
With ContractorBI, you can take this process further by leveraging financial job performance metrics to analyze estimates versus actuals for similar jobs. Break down costs by cost type, cost category, and cost codes to gain a deeper understanding of where variances occur and how to address them. This detailed level of analysis improves accuracy for the current project while providing insights that refine future estimates and enhance overall profitability.
Foster collaboration from the ground up by empowering your team with the tools they need for seamless communication.
Field teams, estimators, and project managers should all have access to the same real-time, accurate data to stay aligned and address challenges as they arise. Software like TopBuilder integrates directly into daily workflows, centralizing data from job sites, estimating processes, project updates, and more.
By streamlining tasks such as capturing leads, creating proposals, managing timelines, sharing documents, tracking accounting data, and measuring success, everyone stays connected and on the same page.
Using the right tools and technology is a game-changer for accurate and efficient estimates. Think of manually calculating estimates like trying to dig a foundation with a shovel – technically possible, but painfully slow, labor-intensive, and prone to mistakes. Estimating is a complex process that requires precision, and relying on outdated methods can cost you time, money, and even your sanity.
Instead, take advantage of smart construction tools like ContractorBI, which streamline the process, reduce errors, and provide data-driven insights. With technology designed specifically for the construction industry, you can tackle even the most complicated estimates with confidence and ease.
In addition to refining project estimates, ContractorBI enables you to analyze payment and financial history for the customer responsible for approving your bid and paying the bill.
For construction companies looking to streamline their estimating process and improve accuracy, ContractorBI makes all the difference. It simplifies cost tracking, provides actionable insights, and ensures that every project estimate is rooted in real-time data. Here’s how ContractorBI can help you create estimates that align with actual costs.
The more than 45 real-time dashboards pulling data from accounting, project management, and estimating tools allow you to track estimated hours and costs versus actuals with intuitive visualizations. For example, you can track estimated labor hours versus actual hours worked or analyze how material costs fluctuate over the course of the project.
By comparing estimated costs with final expenses, ContractorBI identifies discrepancies and highlights opportunities for improvement. This feedback loop feature supports continuous improvement over the long term, beyond just this one project – helping you refine your estimate template and improve accuracy for future projects.
Unexpected costs are inevitable in construction, but with ContractorBI, you can address them before they escalate. For instance, if a sudden labor shortage increases labor costs, ContractorBI can help you adjust schedules or reallocate resources to minimize budget impacts.
You can also use this feature to identify hidden opportunities. For example, if the cost of a high-end material drops mid-project, ContractorBI alerts you, enabling you to provide additional value to a client without exceeding the estimated cost.
Accurate construction estimates are the foundation of any successful project. By refining your estimating process, tracking costs in real-time, and using ContractorBI, you can ensure every project delivers strong margins while meeting client expectations. Whether you’re a general or specialty contractor, investing in technology is necessary to not only stay competitive, but set yourself apart from your competitors in the industry.
Take your estimating and budgeting process to a new level. Learn more about ContractorBI and schedule your demo today!
