Procore fits the needs of a growing commercial general contractor!
November 04, 2021

Procore fits the needs of a growing commercial general contractor!

Darlene Moore | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Project Management
  • Quality & Safety
  • Construction Financials
  • Field Productivity

Overall Satisfaction with Procore

Our Bleuwave Team uses Procore for all our production and field needs. We've currently been using Procore for nearly 2 years and have found it a useful tool in our day-to-day operations. From bidding to managing construction operations, as well as financial obligations, Procore is in use every day at Bleuwave. We are a commercial general contractor specializing in charter schools as well as large retail projects. When a new project comes along, we begin with bidding in Procore and move through to contracting and submittals as well as RFIs and scheduling. Daily Logs help us track our field operations. The financial tools (PCCO's/change events/CCO's/budgets) keep us on track and in line with our accounting obligations. The Company Directory and Project Directories assist with managing our team of subcontractors as well as key stakeholders in all our projects.

Pros

  • Bidding is easy with Procore. We can set up a bid and get it out to bidders within an hour or so. Our bidders can then upload their bids directly into Procore.
  • Subcontract Commitments are customized to take advantage of our boilerplate needs as well as Exhibits that we can easily manage within Procore.
  • PCCO's and CCO's are easily managed via Procore.
  • Submittals can be uploaded to Procore by the subs and then assigned via workflows preset in the Submittal Settings.

Cons

  • There are times where our bidding process could improve due to filtering efforts. One of those efforts involves notifying subs of changes via Email Correspondence within Procore. The correspondence feature does not recognize the filtering within the bid screen so that only certain subs receive the correspondence.
  • Award letters are not part of the bidding process. Rather one has to actually send them a commitment. We would like to see an LOI function to give the sub a heads-up that a commitment is being sent to them.
  • Customization is lacking in numerous tools. The only way some of the customization happens is if we go through the Custom Solutions Team and then it may not be possible.
  • We would like to include a Dear John Letter template within the Bidding tool. The only way we've found to do this is via regular email because there is no way to create or use an already created form which does not serve our purpose.
  • We've definitely become more efficient since using Procore. We were previously doing everything via Excel spreadsheets or Word documents. Now most of our operational processes are through Procore.
  • We save time in the field and in the office as there is now a flow of activities so everyone is on the same page.
  • We manage more projects (whether they are in construction or in bidding stage) more effectively because now we have one place to manage all aspects of it.
We recently moved from Adobe Pro to Bluebeam Revu and are in the process of bridging Bluebeam with Procore. This one integration will improve our submittal process as well as managing our document markups better.
Our field staff likes the daily log feature because of the ease of use and customization that allows them to add or remove items at will so that the reporting is more congruent to that day. Each log can be different from the day before depending on what goes on at the jobsite. This simple thing of customization makes their daily workflow more efficient and effective.
As we grow our business, we have found that many of our applicants have experience with Procore or similar web-based applications. This one thing attracts better qualified applicants and makes our internal on-board process easier since it cuts down on the time it requires to train someone not familar with applications like Procore. Our interview process includes Procore-related questions that relate to our industry and applicants like that we already use a product like Procore for our project management needs.
Having used Buildertrend for many years, I evaluated it for our needs and found that it wasn't robust enough to handle commercial projects. Buildertrend was made more for custom homes or remodeling residential homes. Since we are a commercial general contractor, our needs were better suited to Procore rather than Buildertrend. This very same thing applied to CoConstruct. As to SmartSheets, we tried SmartSheets prior to Procore but was disappointed in the one very BIG thing we needed - a CRM feature that allowed integration within the other parts of SmartSheets. We REQUIRED a good contact database feature that integrated totally within the other tools we required for managing our projects. Procore provided this in a HUGE way.

Do you think Procore delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Procore's feature set?

Yes

Did Procore live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Procore go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Procore again?

Yes

For the most part, Procore works well for most construction-related processes, particularly bidding and certain financial functions. However, there are a few areas that could greatly improve our field staff. Where scheduling is concerned, there doesn't seem to have a 3-week lookahead function that works for us. Scheduling could be greatly improved upon. Also, submittal processing is difficult as the stamping within a submittal approval step is very convoluted and lacks the ease of use that Bluebeam Revu or Adobe Pro offers. This could also be greatly improved upon.

Procore Feature Ratings

Plan distribution & viewing
10
Plan markups & sharing
10
Document sharing
10
Photo documentation
9
Jobsite reports
9
RFI tools
10
Collaboration & approvals
8
Mobile app
8
Submittal design and management
8
Meeting Minutes
9
Specifications
9
Change orders
8
Bid creation
9
Dashboards
8
Standard reports
7
Custom reports
7
Data exportability
8

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