Autodesk Build, based on the former PlanGrid, is construction productivity software. It includes tools to collaborate, collect, and manage project information throughout the project’s construction and operations lifespan. It enables document centralization and tracking.
$39
user per month
monday.com
Score 8.4 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
monday.com Work OS is an open platform designed so that anyone can create the tools they need to run all aspects of their work. It includes ready-made templates or the ability to customize any work solution ranging from sales pipelines to marketing campaigns, CRMs, and project tracking.
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.
monday.com has very clear default views that are easy to follow, simple to update and amend. Automations are really easy to set up, but you need a good idea of what you want to do and the order it needs to be done in. The options available on Automations are improving all the time.
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.
Automation/integrations - Choosing from template automation or creating your own, integrate across platforms.
Dashboards - Different views i.e. kanban, gantt chart, tables, forms.
All info in one place - Add all of the necessary files for each task inside of Monday; don't need to go looking for ages in different folders on our internal system, add comments, and add assignees to each task—very content-rich way of presenting information.
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.
The billing model is awful for small businesses! monday.com makes you feel like they are doing you a favour. You literally pay for seats you don't use. The billing model should be a per seat model!
There are too many addons from monday.com and 3rd party vendors that you have to pay for. The value of those addons is debatable are often rebuildable outside of monday.com in a single use spreadsheet (which pay monthly for an addon that you only need to use once in a while?) or organisations are already using something else in their tech stack for that addon.
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
Teams involved in content creation, such as marketing or editorial teams, could use monday.com to manage the entire content lifecycle. Boards might track content ideas, assignments, drafts, reviews, approvals, and publication schedules, helping teams collaborate and keep content production on track.
Very well thought app, easy to use and provides fast access to the project's plans (your own and your team's), improvements in the annotation posibilities and on-site report generator will be appreciatted. The punch-list report generator and the current/previous plan version compare tools works flawlessly. Haven't used the RFI's nor field report options yet
The templates are great because it gives you a starting point and then you're able to tailor it to the way YOU want it. I use a lot of trial and error in figuring out how to do certain things, but did learn last week that I'm able to reach out to Monday support and set up a call and they help me with what I'm wanting to accomplish.
Everything performs fairly well. Every now and then there are user errors where an employee will not click "ok" on a note they've created and simply exit out (I do wish that something was in place to prevent this, such as a pop "are you finished?")
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.
Fast response from a human, when a human is needed. AI bot gives initial response to my question. Often, the bot response is all I needed to proceed. Best feature is the AI Assistant for writing one-line programs in the Formula columns. The AI Assistant is much smarter than me and adds in well-appreciated items for my formulas. Including column checks and Function suggestions
To have someone walk you thru the features and capabilities of Monday.com is priceless. Someone also coming along later in the contract to see if you are maximizing the program to suit your company needs is beyond helpful. The staff that have provided this training are fun, creative and very patient.
We signed up for the accounts. Created the accounts. Ran the trial version and tested it live while we were running multiple projects and found that it was fitting our needs perfectly. When the trial ended and we were asked to purchase the full version, we did. We have found other ways to use it and it's a breeze.
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.
We used an excel spreadsheet to track our month end close process previously which created a lot of issues around only one person being able to be in the checklist at any given time. Additionally, we were unable to have excel notify us when a task we need to have completed was done, but Monday.com has completely changed that for us!
For it to work across multiple departments and sites, I would like to see improvements made with integrations and automation. For this question, I am acknowledging not only the addition of internal triggers/automation, but also an expansion on external ones.
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.
My favourite example? We used it to take a failed start-up, one where the prime investor was considering pulling out - to being a listed business (EURONEXT) within 18 months. That business now has a market cap at around $200m.
Turnaround of a struggling health tech venture that was buried under endless spreadsheets by its investors - from loss-making to £2M EBITDA in two -years.
Offshoring - Through the adoption of Monday as a key workstream management tool (moving off JIRA) we were able to reduce resource costs by over £2m per annum, without any change in efficiency or quality.
