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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Trimble GC WinEst
Score 5.0 out of 10
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With thousands of users world-wide, WinEst estimating from Trimble GC is a database-driven construction project management solutions on the market. It looks and feels just like Excel with familiar Windows navigation, including drop-down menus and ribbon bars. Behind the covers is a database with multiple work-breakdown structures (WBS) and filters that can be customized to the user's preferences so that estimating data can be sliced and diced and presented in different ways. WinEst…
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.
WinEst is truly built for everyone. Their assemblies/database linking is perfect for self perform and subcontractors while their database management and custom reporting is perfect for GCs. While Excel set the bar, WinEst is on another planet. With the immediacy required by today's markets, WinEst allows you to deliver a superior product while being more accurate.
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.
It's very flexible when building an estimate and selecting items to include. You can either click your way to the datebase or quickly copy and paste similar items.
The numerous ways to view and estimate whether it's by CSI, Uniformat, Master Format, or any view you'd like to see. One of ours is by program area, i.e. Sitework, Tower, Parking Deck, etc. After that, you can sort by Bid Package, CSI, etc. Quick buttons can be created far all the views you'd need which allows changing between views a breeze.
The visual interface is pleasing and easy to read.
It's easy to create your own database using Excel. Once you tag an item with unit costs, sort codes, etc., Winest will import it. You can also build it manually within the program but Excel was faster.
At times, WinEst controls feel counter intuitive. Also the tools available for actually developing the database can feel clunky. This means that if you do not take the time to create a robust import file, you will spend a serious amount of time fixing your errors.
WinEst is also an object based database which means that it is difficult to do mass dumps of information (mainly takeoff) into the program. While this is great for ensuring that everything is done purposefully, it does lead to extended hours of data entry
It takes hours upon hours of use before you begin to realize the true potential. The sheer number of tools is overwhelming and their help resources are very basic and only explain how to correctly enter the data but not the feature's best use cases.
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.
Doug Quinn was our trainer and travels all over the country. Whenever I have an issue I shoot him an email and he quickly responds as soon as his training gets a break.
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.
WinEst simply blows excel and Timberline out of the water. The shear depth of functionality is unparalleled. Not only does WinEst deliver a better product, it also shortens the amount of man hours required for each bid, alternate, pricing exercise, etc. On top of this, it has a number of redundant safeguards for catching errors that the others don't have.
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
