Likelihood to Recommend When receiving RFQ's from companies within a manageable distant from our location, it has been very helpfull. Receiving RFQ's for projects outside of our work area, it is just a waste of time. The projects available are well organized and give date due of proposal.
Read full review Great for small to medium sized businesses Due to the relatively low price point I beleive Contractor Foreman fills the needs of contractors from several hundred thousand to several million in revenue who do not/cannot spend 10's of thousands of dollars on similar software. I believe many contractors struggle to capture and integrate change order management and this software provides a great interface to capture the cause, track the value, and get instant client approval for change orders. The software is also great because the user is able to utilize as many or as few of the features as one wants.
Read full review Pros Helps keep track of multiple jobs at once Helps sort your bid invites into won/lost/pending/archived etc. It is a central location where general contractors can put all their updated files and addendum Lets you see which contractors are bidding the same job so you can coordinate your estimating Read full review Change Orders - the system will generate a change order and send it out for a virtual signature all within the software. Creating an estimate and then using that estimate to onboard a project and generate a contract from the estimate is handy. Customizable daily logs have been very handy and there is no need to grab and file them as they automatically file in their own module and are easily found. Read full review Cons There was a previous glitch where bid forms have been updated by subcontractors that have accessed a former version are not able to access the updated/new bid form. I would like to see the ability for BuildingConnected to automatically send a bid reminder to bidders at a set amount of time prior to the bid date. Read full review Creating an assembly in the Cost Database is an issue No email integration to have Gmail pulled in and link messages from customers to their project for easy view Estimate to create a template for email portion or have attachments with multiple points to initial when signing General place to access all email templates and allow for customization versus needing to search for them. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Eliminated the need for our team to log into multiple systems to do their jobs which aligns to our Lean approach
Read full review Usability Very easy to use.
Read full review Mostly great, especially for the price. The features appear to have definitely been designed by a team with a depth of construction specific experience. I also highly rate the usability because of the vast vast amount of customizability inherent in the system. It appears that almost all forms and features are customabizable on the company level and even specific to different individual users.
Read full review Support Rating Though I haven't had to utilize any live support at BuildingConnected, I know others at my company have and have had good success with them. They seem to be very responsive and since the software is so simple, there are not that many pitfalls or hurdles that you need to work through to accomplish your task.
Read full review I rarely give anyone a 9 or 10 rating for service. The main reason for this rating is Contractor Foreman's dedication to improvement. To be completely frank, CF has fallen down on their tech help with me several times, but I am an exceptionally difficult user to service as I tend to use a product up to it's limits and want more. CF has actually addressed these wants several times (after waits that seemed interminable, but were actually pretty damn fast in the reality of software development)
Read full review Implementation Rating Quick and easy. Pretty much menu-driven
Read full review Alternatives Considered Have used BlueBook Construction, which has a smooth, quick search for local contractors. Still, they don't allow us the client project creation. I even had issues with them displaying proper project descriptions based upon was receiving inadequate and or erroneous bid proposals, and the engagement manager was not flexible in resolving the problem!
Read full review I've used
Buildertrend and Conconstruct near daily for a little over 10 years. They were both pretty solid. But the price kept going up without much value being added to the software. As they grew, they didn't upgrade with the growth, so the sites became slower. Contractor Forman has all the functionality of the others, and several other tools that they don't. There are several tools our company doesn't even use yet that look great. It's not perfect, and the learning curve due to its increased capability is a bit of a challenge. But overall, it is superior in every way that mattered to us, and more affordable.
Read full review Return on Investment Allows our company to accurately estimate the cost of a project. Helps us to reach out to qualified subcontractors based on past experience and history with our company. Contains bid leveling capabilities to ensure that all proposals cover a full scope of work. Read full review We don't have to double enter our job information anymore (estimates, bills, labor hours) to show employees what they need to see. Specific access within Contractor Foreman does that for us. It's taken us longer to learn how Contractor Foreman works within itself than we thought it would, so implementation is taking a little longer than ideal. However, we have been learning a lot along the way about the easiest ways to use the workflow that Contractor Foreman has. Read full review ScreenShots Contractor Foreman Screenshots