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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Revit
Score 9.1 out of 10
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Autodesk’s Revit is a Building Information Modelling (BIM) tool. It enables architectural, MEP, structural, and engineering design, and provides analysis to support iterative workflows
$350
per month
Pricing
HCSS
Revit
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Monthly
$350
per month
1-Year
$2805
per year
3-Year
$8415
per 3 years
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HCSS
Revit
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
Pricing available for monthly, annual, or 3-year subscriptions. Longer subscriptions offer greater discounts.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
HCSS
Revit
Considered Both Products
HCSS
No answer on this topic
Revit
Verified User
Project Manager
Chose Revit
Revit is one of the most powerful tools in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction Field. It is outmatched by none. There is definitely a learning curve, and it cannot be picked up by an average employee and learned without formal training. Revit can do more on the …
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.
Revit is very well suited to creating designs and construction documents for standard buildings. Buildings that need to utilize phasing in their construction process are also well suited to this software. Revit is not as well suited to buildings that have irregular shapes or components that need to be highly detailed.
#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.
Revit allows users to create real buildings and is very much rooted in making functional buildings.
Revit allows users to collaborate both within their own firms and with other types of firms as well. This is particularly useful for coordinating buildings between architecture and engineering firms.
Revit integrates fairly well with other programs such as AutoCAD and Sketchup. This allows us to bring in elements modeled in other programs into our revit models.
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.
Versioning - Revit is not backwards compatible. This creates issues if you are working with people who are using older versions as you cannot save to a previous version. I understand why this is and I do not see this ever changing, however, Its very annoying.
Autodesk - They are the 800 pound gorilla in the industry. The lack of competition inhibits development and it seems Autodesk has put more effort into its BIM 360 platform and Revit development has suffered because of it. I would like to see better competition so Autodesk would step up its game.
We will almost certainly be renewing all of our current seats of Revit and will likely be adding seats as we look to get more and more of our staff trained and using Revit. The software is starting to become the standard for our projects as we move forward as more and more of our clients are requesting or accepting use of it
As mentioned, user interface appears messy and complicated at initial onset. Training is necessary but becomes easy to maneuver through after solid daily use.
It is a professional environment, but far from easy and overly complex in many places. The system is often too deep in settings and overrides (see Visibility/Graphics in combination with linked files, filters, color overrides and view templates). I don't really like the dialog-in-dialog interface and its spartan looks. But it works well overall if you know what you are doing.
Revit seems to always be available when I need it. I have not experiences an outage. There are occasions where we need our internal IT department to trouble shoot a file on our Revit dedicated server and that sometimes causes a delay however that is not a software access issue
Revit is a fairly graphics heavy piece of software. It is powerful in its capabilities but as a result it takes a lot of the graphics card, the memory, etc. For all that it can do and the specs of my computer I find it pretty good from a performance standpoint
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.
Autodesk has always had a good support system in place. There is a massive user base for Revit, and there are thousands of forum threads and other discussions online about any and every problem that you could ever run into. For being such a large program with so many different options, there aren't many roadblocks or pitfalls that users can fall into.
The training was Revit Essentials and it was very beneficial. I would say that it is best to get the training right before you know you will be using Revit as learning the basis then applying what you learned immediately is the most effective and best value for your money.
The online training is hit or miss. I feel that its better to be live to be able to pace and ask questions to a live person as you are learning hwo to do things. Its not natural to learn Revit especially if you know AutoCAD so my suggestion is the live training
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.
Implementing Revit as your main drafting software (i.e. moving to BIM from CAD) may be a tough decision if you have learned drafting. It is a different way to approach and think about developing a project. However, if you are able to adapt to a new way of thinking and get used to it by working through a few projects than it is as efficient as CAD in most areas in general and will also be both better/worse in some areas
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
Revit is used primarily for creation of contract documents and documents that need to be used to build in the field. Sketch Up is great for a quick concept sketch, but lacks the details that Revit has which are needed to construct. AutoCAD is a great tool for details as well, but does not have as many building capabilities as Revit.
While I am not directly involved with the deployment of Revit, it seems that our internal IT department has appreciated the ability to increase or decrease the number of seats. I have never had an issue with the deployment if and when needed, especially regarding the availability of a set
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.
Though implementation of Revit is usually front heavy which means a lot of effort is put in at the front end of the project, the return of investment towards the remainder of the project is really good. All the effort in decisions made at the beginning of the project pays off with Revit incorporating all the building information in the model so the team can glean from this throughout the life of the project is a major plus.
A major negative is the many false assumptions that comes with using Revit on a project. Just like any other computer application, Revit is only a tool. It's only as good as the operators who implement this tool. Revit is not a cureall for fixing all the problems that still can come out throughout the life of a design & construction project.
A major positive for our office involving the use of Revit is the ability for our staff from multiple offices to work on the same project central file. We don't need to maintain an expensive server. With the addition of Collaboration for Revit the entire project can be stored in the cloud for our staff to access and complete the project faster than ever.
