HCSS is a construction software suite. It includes functionality for bidding, time card and project management, safety, planning, scheduling, equipment management, and data warehousing and reporting. Each module can be purchased separately. The suite can be hosted in the cloud.
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monday.com
Score 8.3 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.
Our operation uses several pieces of what we call specialty equipment (not used every day on every job). The foreman when finished will give a location of where this equipment is left, this many times can be very vague and lead to a lowboy driver trying to block around to find the piece or driving down a street he cannot get turned around in. With the GPS devices, the driver can pinpoint exactly where the unit is and if he has room to turn around at that location.
The platform has a good deal of versatility and extensibility, but I do not feel it is well suited for anything too complex. More complexity seems to bog down performance and increase maintenance to keep everything humming. As much as possible, avoid creating too many bespoke workarounds that will end up creating tech debt. The platform seems to work best for more straightforward scenarios and smaller to mid-size companies. Pricing can be reasonable for specific teams, but can feel a little too pricey for company-wide usage. It has served us well for the early stages of our company, but we find ourselves offloading the more complex use cases to other apps specifically developed for those, and reducing to just those teams that are more deeply embedded in the functionality.
#1 is support! HCSS is by far the best software support of any product we have ever used. Unlike most software companies HCSS utilizes their support calls to help upgrade their software. When you here them tell you that they will write down a particular issue you come across during a support call if they can't help you then and there they will research and get an answer to you extremely fast. If the software will not do it, you can bet there is a good chance it will be on the list of enhancements you will see come out in the near future.
Estimating software is very extensive. Their software is capable of handling the smallest estimate all the way to the largest joint venture estimate. It has advanced features that make it extremely useful for analyzing job materials, subcontractors etc.
HeavyJob is an extremely useful tool for the field to keep the office up to date with job costs. Everything is at the Foreman's fingertips on Tablets to allow the information from the field to get uploaded to HeavyJob manager which then can export to accounting. We are also able to give our Foreman the ability to deal with the Daily and weekly safety needs (Tailgate Meetings, incident Investigation, observations etc.) right on the Tablets thru HeavyJob.
I like summary of subitems, especially with subitasks as subitems and add item tracking for each subtask it can show total tracked in parent item. Similar with other columns, like numbers, status, date.
Dashboard features, Many kinds of dashboard view available, we can utilize on the basis of requirements.
monday.com workform is very powerful, easily share form link when submitted it will create line item in board with provided data.
monday.com automation is very helpful in order to automate steps with specific rules and easy setup.
monday.com also provides integrations in order to automate processes if need to integrate multiple app together. or need to transfer data between multiple apps.
All their apps are on mobile devices. Although there is not a clear company policy on Android versus iPhone. Updates for features lag behind on Android. Some apps are exclusive to one platform making it hard to fully interconnect all programs.
I would like to see our company logo show up larger on the form feature.
I prefer the version of the form they have now instead of the new version for 2025. The current form shows the questions in bold font, and the new version does not. This may mean it could take our volunteers longer to get to the pertinent information on the form.
It would be nice if monday.com staff had monthly webinars showing how to use some features. such as, using formulas effectively.
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.
As mentioned, user interface appears messy and complicated at initial onset. Training is necessary but becomes easy to maneuver through after solid daily use.
I give monday.com a 10/10 because I almost never encounter any lag or connectivity issues despite all of the many templates, boards, and automations we have. As a matter of fact, I feel like the last issue I encountered was over a year ago... and I'm in monday.com every single work day. Not only is monday trustworthy, it is easy to find what I'm looking for... making the overall usability extremely hard to beat.
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?")
I have never had a bad experience or heard of one in 4 years of doing business with HCSS. That is unheard of even with the hurricanes and flooding in Houston area it feels like HCSS was always there and willing to help in every way.
monday.com only really care about accounts that have 20 seats or more. While this is great for monday.com, it pushes smaller organisations to evaluate alternatives. We rate monday.com highly in our organisation because key staff have already got good experience with the application and we know we will get to 20+ seats one day. But, till then the billing model and lack of permanent enterprise features is a dread.
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.
I was not employed with PPI upon implementation. I would prefer to reference my previous statement, that each company needs to evaluate its culture and address your implementation accordingly. The purchasing company should assign an employee as point person and really take charge of not just the technical side of the implementation (HCSS pretty much handles that), but focus on company culture and training.
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.
Other estimating products I have used consist of ICE/MC2 and MS Excel. ICE was not a good fit for our company, as they have awful technical support and offer very poor training. MS Excel is great for simple estimates where there is not a lot of data being compiled. However neither hold a candle to the power of HCSS Heavybid
monday.com is cleaner, offers more customization and is easier to design out with a team project focus in mind. With the ability to automate steps as well, it is super easy to move tasks along, have stages auto-update and to go through my personal to-do list of tasks to get things done.
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.
Because of the codebooks (bid item codebook for DOT's specifically), we're able to carve off significant time in "stick-building" estimates
It's very easy to train newer estimators with HeavyBid due to the abundance of resources available on HCSS Academy and elsewhere (i.e. Arthur Nix's material)
The KPI's and Insights that Pre-Con offers helps us to make better decisions on Bid Day.
Much easier to review my prior month and report to clients on work completed; easy to extract the information and work done to Excel to add budget tracking etc - I see this is possible in monday.com and I will investigate how/if this is possible on our current plan.
Very fast and easy set-up of Boards.
Still lots to learn and grasp - many more opportunities to become more efficient using monday.com. I'm only just getting started.
The initial automations are quick and easy to set up, and if set up correctly.
My month-end client status and progress reports are now more accurate, and I can keep track of all the information in one place (inside monday.com).
