Hands down the best construction cradle to grave platform.
Updated April 16, 2025

Hands down the best construction cradle to grave platform.

Dick McElligott | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Planning, Scheduling and Risk – Schedule (Basis)
  • Field Execution Management – Plan, Progress and Compliance (Inspect)

Overall Satisfaction with InEight

JWF is in the heavy civil construction market specializing in large diameter underground utilities, transportation, industrial treatment, trenchless, and port facilities. InEight is used daily for the cost estimating and feasibility analysis of hard bid and alternative delivery projects ranging from $1 million to $400 million. With InEight, JWF can easily coordinate multiple users in different locations throughout the world to review, estimate and complete a complex bid, all while maintaining a database that is uniform with a real-time review of the changes. It also provides the flexibility to conform to less robust platforms (Sage/Timberline, HeavyBid).

Pros

  • Tagging segments of work.
  • User defined views and descriptions for all screens.
  • Customizable ribbons to provide an efficient use of the software.
  • Multiple layers/dependents to allow for an extreme drill down of the work and the ability to roll up to a more useful level for upper management review.
  • You can bid the work as you would build it, in detail.

Cons

  • Tie into QTO software such as blue beam or Planswift.
  • Better training of users and continuing education.
  • Links to plan sheets for CBS lines for reference.
  • Ability to have pdf link in assemblies for basis of assembly.
  • less cumbersome copy and paste issues in the CBS
  • Better tax structure to allow certain line items or resources to be taxed in an estimate. Washington state uses a very complex tax structure that can be daunting to cover taxes on mixed projects for first-time users.
  • More detailed estimates for projects and alternative deliver partners.
  • Able to reduce estimating time entry time on projects with assemblies allowing for more review of plans and specifications.
  • Excellent tool for remote estimates allowing for more involvement from field construction personnel.
More detailed estimates with a uniform database. Better handoff from estimate to project execution with a a final lessons learned and up to the minute project cost.
Because I've used several other platforms, and they suck when it comes to drilling down. Once we have the controls platform in full usage with 100% of the projects this will improve the rating to a 10.
Been using this with remote workers for years. It's excellent, and the changes are traceable. One of the challenges is bring new people into the organization and having them understand the differences between resource items and cost items. While Kiewit may have at one point purchased InEight (HardDollar) they failed to keep the resource and cost items as materials vs subcontracts resulting in misinformed individuals preaching this is the "Kiewit way". Sorry, that is the wrong way, you tag cost items in the CBS as such clearly identifying the unique scope of the subcontract. A resource is often a multiple usage item and can be used in many areas therefore anything used in the Unique register should be limited to strictly and unit price of Labor and Equipment such as outside rental dump trucks, concrete pumps, testing services, sweeping, traffic control and so on. Please beat this into the Kiewit estimating team. I've been using this platform since 2000, they have not.
In the past excellent, the training online and via help videos takes away the user experience and quite frankly sucks. I've known Richard Moore for 28 years and he is one of the InEight representatives that helps JWF and I would rather utilize an onsite trainer than help videos. People make the difference not the screen with how to videos. That only works for car shows with humor, this is real world work, no humor to help this.
heavy bid is okay for bid item work and has a few things in the quote folder screen that are nice and user friendly but the ability to tag is not as useful.

Do you think InEight delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with InEight's feature set?

Yes

Did InEight live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of InEight go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy InEight again?

Yes

InEight is an excellent platform for large and small projects. The difficulty comes when bidding work based on the department of transportation specifications to the CSI divisions 0-46. There is no one size fits all, so you find a butting of heads in working with a transportation estimator and industrial estimator. Both see the other as useless divisions, often resulting in a tangled mess of a bid if a senior individual is not running lead. As for the size of projects, the system is excellent for thousand-dollar change orders to billion-dollar projects. The outputs can be as detailed or rolled up as necessary so as not to overwhelm clients or management.

InEight Feature Ratings

Plan distribution & viewing
10
Plan markups & sharing
10
Document sharing
10
Issue tracking & punchlists
10
Photo documentation
10
Jobsite reports
10
RFI tools
8
Collaboration & approvals
8
As-built drawings
7
Mobile app
8
Submittal design and management
7
Checklists
7
Meeting Minutes
7
Specifications
7
Change orders
10
Takeoff tools
5
Job costing
10
Cost databases
10
Cost calculator
10
Bid creation
10
Dashboards
10
Standard reports
10
Custom reports
10
Data exportability
10

Using InEight

40 - 10 estimators
20 engineers
10 project manager
6 division managers
4 support staff
  • Cost estimating for hard bid projects.
  • referencing pas projects for estimating and quickly building comparable estimates
  • multi level breakdown and roll up for alternative delivery pricing

Comments

  • Ellen Bartlett | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a thorough review. We really appreciate your feedback and perspective. Thanks for being an InEight customer!

More Reviews of InEight