Arcoro is an HR technology company focused on the construction industry, offering solutions to help companies hire, manage and grow their back office, professional and skilled trade workforce.
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RSMeans data, from Gordian (Costworks)
Score 10.0 out of 10
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RSMeans data, from Gordian (formerly Costworks) is a construction and estimation software offering acquired by the Gordian Group in 2014. It includes cost books and construction project estimating software tools.
We have recommended to at least two other colleagues. It helps to prevent dishonest time keeping. Manual timekeeping by a supervisor seems to create a lot of room for errors including forgetfulness of who showed up and when. It's nice to be able to track when each employee is working or how many people are on each worksite.
Well Suited: Construction cost estimates for new larger projects where the construction will start within the next 6-9 months. Budgetary estimates for future buildings through its square foot models. Not Well Suited: Not accurate enough on small projects where labor, travel to sites, and OH&P are a higher percentage of unit costs than on larger projects where these costs are spread out across more units.
Employee logs in and answers health-related questions before beginning work. They remotely provide their own timesheet information, adjustable by the administrator where needed.
Location at time of login is readily available. Distance from jobsite can be determined at any login.
Time for lunch is automatically deducted from work hours, logged by type of work interrupted, and easily adjustable by the employer if necessary.
Reports by employees of time spent on any type of work during the work day and work week are readily available. Work by job name is also available.
CostWorks is very good at generating quick and valid estimates for standardized facilities such as office buildings, schools, etc. It allows you to validate other cost estimates at the UniFormat level when doing an estimate validation.
CostWorks' database of detailed line-items is a very resourceful asset when it comes to finding a very specific line-item. Sometimes, when using Success or MII, I will have CostWorks open on the other screen so I can find an item that the other softwares just don't have and build it into the other software from the CostWorks entry.
CostWorks does a very good job of generating reports that are both well-developed and have enough detail at the summary level to be able to sit with a client or a project manager and have them follow along and understand without being overwhelmed with detail and numbers.
It is easer to keep someing going then change things out. Our employees have taken 6 months to learn this one, I do not want to reinvent the wheel. Just this week I have seen inprovment as they now know they do not get paid if they do not clock in and back out every day.
It's easy for anyone tech savvy. It is kind of impossible to make anything even more user-friendly than it already is. The app itself has zero issues for all my staff. The admin side of things takes a bit more knowing and learning.
I have had problems outside of normal business hours and I get a return phone call from them pretty quickly. There has only been I think 1 instance that I waited for too long to be able to fix my situation.
Gave a notice to all employees to come to work 15 min early on the day planned to implement the program. I had Spanish and English signs on how to down load the program and log in I showed them ALL how to log in and out and explained that they are responsible for reporting accurate time. I had them all sign a policy that lunch breaks were mandatory for all employees at least 30 min per day. This ensures safety on the roofs. We had a few people who did not have passwords to the app store and we had a few problems with android phones but most of them were on their way quickly. Most not happy about the change but I hope they see the benefit of it now.
We still use Sage, and ExakTime is compatible with it, which is why we went with ExakTime. So technically we use both at this time. ExakTime is a great pairing with Sage since Sage does not have any applications that let employees clock in and out. So we use ExakTime for that and then transfer the information to Sage for the reporting and issuing of deposits/checks, etc.
CostWorks is a unique software for estimating as compared to the other softwares I have listed above. PACES is mostly used for federal modeling and really cannot be compared to Costworks. It has its own developed modeling database and has its own quirkiness and issues. MII has been developed for the USACE and utilized a user-developed folder structure and RS Means Database. I use CostWorks along side this software to find line-items that are not in the MII RS Means Database. Success has been developed for NAVFAC and again, utilizes a user-developed folder structure and RS Means Database. When I use this software, I ALWAYS have CostWorks open on the other screen as Success' RS Means database is extremely lacking when it comes to the number of detail line-items. Timberline is by SAGE and I use it mostly for DOS and FAA work. Of the 3 RS Means Database softwares, this one has the most detailed database for reference, however, there are times when I do have to look up an item that Timberline does not have and the first software I open is CostWorks.
Employees clock in and out with accuracy to the minute instead of guessing how many hours they worked on each job/day
Jobs/locations are listed on the app so employees can easily find the job they are working on instead of hunting through paperwork to find the location number
Geofencing tracks employees clocking in outside the job location
I don't really see any "negative" impacts on my business or my ROI by purchasing CostWorks. It's a valuable tool that we use, however, some of my colleagues do not use it or use it very infrequently.
I find it well worth the cost even though we don't develop complete estimates in CostWorks due to client dictated softwares.
It has provided very quickly-built estimating models that let our team and project managers know that the RFP or the task that they are contemplating bidding on or starting to work on is actually feasible to construction given the budget and directive.
