Project, estimate, employee, and customer management are the best items in Contractor Foreman. It's nice to be able to assign leads out and use the same card to convert a customer through the entire process. I really like the kanban method of managing projects, and Contractor Foreman is well-suited to that.
SketchUp is great for individually studying options for building design. It is an awesome conceptual tool to be able to quickly model and manipulate a building to study different designs. It is not good for complex geometries, especially curves. Surfaces have a hard time registering and cutting into one another. It also eventually needs to go into Revit to be more realistic as it is not good as a documentation tool
Quickly exploring solutions in 3D: We get a lot of "what if" and "what would that look like" questions. While hand-sketching and hand-drafting can be fairly quick, SketchUp allows me to quickly create 3D and 2D views of a detail or solution, change dimensions and materials in a flash, and show a client or installer the plan in minutes.
Creating professional design documents in LayOut: Projects of any scale need good documentation. Using a combination of SketchUp and LayOut, I can create a Design Intent Set, plans for permitting, a set for mechanical trades to mark-up, etc. Having clear, appropriately-scaled drawings with dimensions or notations is a must, and we don't always have the time or budget to get an architect involved!
Using live files to guide discussions: Not all clients are "visual" people, so opening their model and orbiting around their space in real time has been extremely helpful. Clients and trades enjoy the perspective views so much that we often include them in the full-sized drawing sets to give a good "overall" view of the project intent. For complex or tight spaces, sometimes un-rendered plans and elevations just aren't enough!
In the CDB, I'd like to be able to create a line item with a specified percentage, and when I pull that line item into an estimate or proposal, I'd like the system to automatically calculate it based on that contract value. (Example, Contingency line is always going to be 15% of the contract value).
I'd like to be able to rearrange "blocks" on a page when I'm getting ready to send or print it. Lots of dead space on pages. Estimates 4 pages in total when it could be 2.
I'd like to be able to create budget summaries. Where the line items are grouped into their respective master format categories, and the category has the sum of all the line items in that category.
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
We typically wait a few years in between renewing, as even older versions are powerful tools for modeling, and we make sure the amount of feature changes are worth the re-investment.
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
It is very user friendly and easy to learn. It's simplicity allows for a low learning curve so more people can learn it faster. The downside is that most schools are no longer teaching it, so many younger professionals come out of school not knowing it and knowing more complex software and they have a hard time "dumbing down" their skillsets
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
Absolutely top notch! They were always there to help and immediately. Very happy with the communication they provided and the knowledge they had of their product. I would venture to say that they are one of the best in terms of support in their space.
Sketchup is so intuitive; I can't recall ever looking for official support. However, there are many user forums online that can answer more questions. The usefulness of the online forums is, however, tempered by the fact that there have been many versions of the software under different ownership and support regimes, and thus finding the right information for the right version of the software can be a challenge.
Contractor Foreman’s pricing is much more cost-effective for small to mid-sized construction businesses, making it a better fit for my company’s budget. It offers an intuitive interface with pre-built construction templates, minimizing setup time and making it easier at least for my team to adopt and start using. The platform’s focus on project tracking, financial management, and nice integrations that makes it highly efficient for tracking project progress, staying on budget, and managing subcontractors/bills. These factors combined made it the ideal choice for meeting my company's specific needs efficiently and cost-effectively.
We have not evaluated any other competing software to this one. I heard about this software from a friend who teaches how to use it. She showed me in just a few minutes and I was HOOKED. I saw immediately the possible help it would be to my business. Thank you.
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.
