Likelihood to Recommend In this case, CF is the best of the 'OK so far' category in my mind. NONE of the software available today gets close to a truly effective, user friendly GUI and functionality set. I have used 7 different systems over the years, with the top 4 big names having the largest hours operating. Most have less functionality, others are severely overpriced and under featured. Still others are so complicated you need an entire IT department to implement them. Contractor Foreman does much of what it does the absolute best for the money, meaning this is probably the best value for construction management software I'm aware of. I believe I can say with confidence, that if CF does it, it strives to do it well, and continues to strive to get it better. Picking a feature or two that excels is rather pointless in a company with that outlook. THAT is a company I can get behind...
Read full review SmartBid is also very useful for conducting sub-contracting analysis and management simulations in the didactic field. The procedures for sharing documents are helpful, but the graphic can be improved. Many forms can be pre-filled. This helps a lot in saving time and money! SmartBid is great for exporting and/or sending single or mass emails. However, as mentioned, it would be useful to simplify some pre-construction processes and improve the overall communication
Read full review Pros Estimates Project management Lead management - tracking where they are in the funnel and having web lead automatically pull into the system. Read full review It's very easy to set up a job and manage who receives solicitations. You can also keep detailed notes on who've you contacted and see if they're actually downloading and reviewing the documents. You can add a confidentiality agreement clause which they must accept before accessing the documents. It then stores this information if it ever needs to be accessed. This is much cleaner and easier then sending out a NDA form and having the subcontractor return it before actually sending drawings/docs. You can send Invitations to Bid and set it up to continue sending these ITB's until the subcontractor responds. However, this can also be a negative point because once you set up a delayed ITB, it doesn't update as the subcontractors view and respond to the ITB's. So if a sub is "Not Responded" and you set up a delayed ITB to fire off every day for 5 days, and the sub responds after day 2, that sub will continue to receive ITB's for all 5 days. Uploading drawings is quick and easy. It's especially convenient if you link to one of your cloud services such as Egnyte, Google Drive, etc. The search tools are quick and easy and often very accessible from any page. Read full review Cons Some of the modules like checklists and forms are confusing and hard to use some of the training videos or versions of an old outdated version of the software Would like to see a more efficent way of creating a submittal log generated from a specification book Read full review We have seen intermittent problems with notes disappearing. Ability to have more than one project bidding open at the same time/on multiple windows. Mobile apps. 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 Support Rating 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 SmartBid has an excellent support team that is always at your service. Any problem I've had (when I've even had them) has been resolved almost immediately, along with tips on how to avoid them in the future. If you're looking for a program with excellent customer service, look no further than SmartBid.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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 SmartBid is used by more of the contractors that we happen to do lots of work with. It has basically the same features. However, SmartBid will let subcontractors view all the jobs a general contractor is bidding, even ones we were never invited to. So it has the potential to bring more opportunities.
Read full review Return on Investment 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 It is a big time saver compared to sending out individual emails. It saves time in having multiple individual databases for company contact info. It ensures that everyone is getting the same information. Read full review ScreenShots Contractor Foreman Screenshots