Autodesk Build vs. GCPay

PlanGrid performs really well in all aspects of construction from the general to the sub/trade. The platform distributes and communicates project documentation in an extremely user-friendly manner. As with most software, it is cheaper the larger the scale of the project. In situations where the project is relatively small, and the trade contracts are also of relatively low dollar value, the product can be cost-prohibitive.

Incentivized

Their customer service is top notch and as a whole I don't like customer service departments, but they listen to you and help you with your problem, this includes telephone service and email. Their email and telephone number is listed on every page of their website, unlike other companies that try and hide this information. They will train your company to use the system and your users, and the system can be used on any internet capable device such as computer, tablet, or phone. Subcontractors can fill out the invoice by percentage complete and/or actual dollar amounts, and they can easily upload photos or other documentation needed to complete the invoice. If you need to have document(s) notarized you can use your own service or GCPay has a service that will notarize the document(s) for you for a fee. Finally, you control the level of reviewers you want for your company and situation. We have some items that have 2 reviewers and others that only have 1 reviewer. Overall, we are very happy with this system and number of hours we save every week verses having to manually enter all of our subcontractor invoices

Incentivized

• Plangrid is the best SaaS I have seen for ease of uploading construction plans and automated organization of those plans.
• For companies that are not using other products for mobile access, the Plangrid mobile apps are perfect to allow people on and off site to share and collaborate in many phases of construction project documentation.
• Plangrid has a very responsive technical support team (although it is pretty much email only).
• Plangrid's website layout is easy to use and understand and allows new users to jump right in and do basic to moderate tasks without little training.

Incentivized

• Customer Service to us and our subcontractors is top rated!
• Ease of entering the SOV and invoices by the subcontractor
• Constantly listening to possible improvements and implementing lots of these suggestions.
• Can implement multiple levels of reviews of invoices and/or waivers

Incentivized

• The photo attachment process is a bit complicated. In ProCore (another similar software I've used), you can upload photos directly into RFIs for your reference, or into e-mails. For PlanGrid, you have to first upload the photo into the documents tab, then link them into the RFI. It's not intuitive and can add confusion to the documents tab.
• Photos can't be directly uploaded. Between different devices and colleagues, it's possible you'll get an important photo outside of the PlanGrid photo capture feature within its app. Again, it's complicated for users to use.
• In their new drawings viewer, the icons for actions do not have icons available. I had to use them all in order to understand what they meant, and I'm fairly tech savvy. I'm not sure if a new person to PlanGrid will pick up on each icon's abilities very easily.
• There's no all-in-one solution in CM, but PlanGrid is fairly barebones, and I don't believe it has any ability to connect to other software. There's no ability to take meeting munites; you can hack the field reports feature to accomplish this, but it's clear that was not the intent of the designers.

Incentivized

• When waivers have been completed by the subcontractor, but have not been reviewed by the GC yet, I wish the OW tag would stay up until the waiver was either reviewed and approved or rejected. (OW stands for outstanding waiver)
• That the GC had the option to update the amount paid to the supplier. Right now if the unconditional lien waiver is received and is a different amount the only way to update this is sending GCPay an email. We don't do this and would love this as an option, so the tier vendor spreadsheet was accurate.

Incentivized

We are at the point where we have shown our teams what is possible with this software. We cannot take it away and go back to the way we used to do things. I think that they would push back on us to give them access to something electronic. It is a good program that we will continue to use

Incentivized

Hard to get the hang of this software, but with time it become very repetitive and easier to navigate. I have used this software for over a year now and the constant updates by Autodesk have made the software better and better to use at work. This allows me to use this tool more effectively

Incentivized

Online chat during business hours is extremely helpful. The Plangrid staff has gone above and beyond many times to help us. One time they even offered to completely rebuild our 900+ sheet project so I could slip sheet a few old drawing revisions! This undoubtedly would have taken hours on Plangrid's end. They are always responsive and are continually improving, listening to user feedback.

Incentivized

Plangrid, while not serving the external document distribution function, is unrivaled for internal document distribution and sharing in the construction industry. The speed at which documents are navigatable, the ability to download your projects for viewing without an internet connection, and the document mark-up and photo tools place it head and shoulders above the competition.

Incentivized

We liked what they had to offer and didn't look at other programs.

Incentivized

• It helped us "wow" a joint commission survey in 2016 and have a successful survey because he loved how we could access plans on an iPad, check suite sizes, and didn't have to carry around huge, heavy sets of life safety plans.

Incentivized

• The number of hours we save by not having to manually enter paper/email copies of invoices from subcontractors
• The number of errors saved by not completing invoices manually.
• The easy of reviewing the tier vendor report to see how balanced a subcontractor is with paying their suppliers/sub-subcontractors

Incentivized