Contractor Foreman vs. Newforma Project Center

Contractor Foreman has been a great tool for managing a variety of projects, from home remodels to large-scale builds. It works especially well for keeping everything organized in one place, whether it’s estimates, schedules, or job costs.
One scenario where it’s been really useful is in managing multiple jobs at once. With several remodels and new construction projects happening at the same time, having a centralized system to track progress, store documents, and communicate with subcontractors has helped keep everything on schedule. It’s also great for estimating—being able to quickly generate and send professional proposals has made bidding much more efficient.
It’s especially well-suited for projects that require a lot of moving parts, like tracking permits and compliance documents. For larger jobs, like school construction, it helps ensure that all approvals, budgets, and schedules stay on track without getting lost in a mess of paperwork.
Where it’s less ideal is for smaller, one-off jobs where a full project management system might be overkill. If it’s just a quick repair or a simple remodel, sometimes it’s easier to just handle things manually. The mobile app could also be a bit more intuitive for on-site use, especially for field updates and quick changes.
Overall, it’s a strong tool for contractors managing multiple projects, budgets, and teams. It keeps things organized and saves time, especially on jobs that require detailed tracking and coordination.

Newforma is a great tool to collaborate with large teams and between firms. It allows for great documentation of transfers, activities, and other procedural aspects of projects that require collaboration between disciplines, for example, MEP, electrical, architectural and technology. For internal use, Newforma has been great for communications tracking and archival, as well as for record-keeping of all the users in a team or number of teams. Many great options are features are unused due to a lack of training or exposure to them, for example, the graphical viewers that can preview CAD, Revit, and other formats, or the markup tool available with the desktop client.

Incentivized

• The service is top notch. You would be hard pressed to find other options with this kind of service.
• The ability to have your project flow through the modules makes it a breeze to use.
• Being able to track time as well is a key feature.

Incentivized

• Newforma sits on top of our previous filing system (Windows Explorer). This was very important to us because we didn't have to change the project numbering system in order to fit Newforma's design. Also, if we were to decide we didn't like it, we could easily revert back to our previous methods.
• Newforma does a great job of indexing information, making searches much easier by being able to use keywords instead of knowing the exact file location. No more traversing through countless folders before finding what you need.
• Newforma keeps a read receipt for everything that you submit through it for issue tracking, and keeps an easy to read record of your workflow.

Incentivized

• Security and sensitive file visibility. Users with no permissions can have access to some hidden files.
• Daily log navigation. Users now need to exit one log entirely to view or check another, resulting in a significant waste of time and reduced efficiency.
• Customization options for reports. No options to set up and automatically send reports by email to specified users.

Incentivized

• I have found it difficult to locate audits.
• Some users have issues while uploading project data.

We have compiled so much information on CF it would be counterproductive to move to another software. We have also sold a lot of clients on the client portal feature. It is crucial for our communication between customers. The only reason we wouldn't renew the service is if somewhere offered the exact same service but at a lower cost

Incentivized

Overall, Contractor Foreman is a great product, and I’m sure we’ve only scratched the surface of everything it has to offer. It can be a little quirky at times, occasionally displaying a 'Bad Gateway' message, but we haven’t experienced any timeout issues in the past few months. As we continue to use it, I’m confident we’ll uncover even more ways to streamline our workflow

Incentivized

Availability was good, FUNCTIONAL availability was more spotty

Incentivized

Many times we had issues that turned out to be errors and bugs. At first, we would be told forcefully that there were no bugs, then we would document them, and we would get an acknowledgement but no apology for essentially either gaslighting us or being ignorant of their system

Incentivized

We have only had one issue the entire time we have had Contractor Foreman and that was that we had the hardest time getting the platform to allow us to log in, but we called our support and within 5 mins we able to log back in

Incentivized

While I have never asked for support myself, a Newforma representative has been in the office annually to give training seminars and info sessions on how to fully use the product. I find this essential to keep the product relevant and make sure everyone knows its full capabilities and an important part of customer support.

Incentivized

The team that does your implementation is amazing. They're skillful, kind, they will take as much time as you need, and they have a sense of urgency

Incentivized

There's just no comparing these two. I'm actually going to suggest we keep CE to my boss, and here's why: Clearestimates is perfect for what I just described. You have a little job that you just BOOM it's done? Put it into Clearestimates. That system does not care at all if you did it "properly." Now Contractor Foreman does so. much. more. than CE. It just does. You can do everything on CF (just not anything haha). Most businesses wouldn't need anything else, but since we're still growing, we do some handyman stuff every now and again that CE is perfect for, and we don't have to go through CF's really picky system to make sure every little tiny thing is correct

Incentivized

A good competitor against other similar solutions and support is excellent.

Incentivized

We had just 2 users

Incentivized

• Positive return for invoice/change order tracking
• Great price
• Prior to using Contractor Foreman we had to wait until the end to capture all change orders in one summary. Now, with the client portal, we can capture in real time and the client has visibility.
• We have been trying to reduce administration time in tracking field expenses and with Contractor Foreman our field crew can uplaod reciepts and track expenses right from their mobile phones.
• Punchlist - the punch list and To Do features are so robust we have drastically improved getting punchlists and small tasks completed in single trips without the wasted time and travel of multiple trips due to missed/forgotten items.

Incentivized

• Newforma makes it easy to transfer, share, archive, and search extensive data sets in a single GUI
• For it to be effective, all users in a team must receive a basic training and use it consistently
• Adoption in the industry is good (A/E); many teams use it consistently. Learning to use it once produces time-saving in subsequent projects

Incentivized