HeavyBid

The power of the system, the ability to manipulate and quickly adjust pricing. Customer support is un-stumpable. The ability to import data from previous bids makes the estimating process fast and accurate.

As with anything this powerful, you must dedicate the time to learn the system. The ideal program is to bring in a trainer once a month for 6 months to grow and groom the new user.

This software is so easy to set-up, from adding employees, job classifications, to merging employees into the job, to exporting timecards. The setup flow just make sense. Works great for those who have crews out in the field, foremen can use their tablets to record time, material and equipment used on the job and submit. No more paper time cards to do manual entry with.

This software has "user licenses" you have to buy, so at times they may all be used by other users in the company. It does allow you to "boot" them off, but you better make sure they are not in the middle of something if you do or they will lose the information. A quick phone call to ask if they can log out is best.

The support team is always very helpful with any questions and or problems. When bidding large DOT projects we can bring the crews in with the activity and it saves an enormous amount of time by not having to building your crew for each activity.

I do not like the amount of clicks that is required to create an estimate. I did see some improvement when modify the crews for the new version we can now do it without clicking on modify crew, then selecting the equipment and or operator that we want to change.

I love how you can preload your labor and equipment cost into the system and only allow certain people to adjust them as union wages go up or inflation hits. This adds to the accuracy of your estimates. I also like how you can pull in quotes from subcontractors and these are stored on the system. The integration to HeavyJob is seamless. This makes bidding the job and managing the budget simple and efficient. The customer support line is extremely useful.

It's very expensive and it takes a little while to get set up and can be a little frustrating at first. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes a lot easier and much more efficient and accurate than an Excel sheet.

As a product, HeavyBid makes estimating quick and accurate. Our estimators' success rate is quite impressive, and I'm sure they're very thankful to have the assistance of a powerful tool. As a vendor, HCSS has the best support and customer relations around, hands down. Their support is one of the best because they are willing to take on any issue and spend as much time as possible to resolve it. Unlike many other vendors I have worked with, they don’t require additional costs for remote support or training during a support session. Their answer rate is very quick, usually only taking 10 minutes to get someone on the phone. Their support staff is friendly and knowledgeable. Their after-hours support is equally impressive. I would highly recommend them based on their support alone.

They have always resolved any gripes or dislikes I may have had in the past by listening to customer feedback, improving with updates, or through support calls.