c/construction-software

Why does everyone push Procore like its the only option out there

I work for a mid-size crew in Austin and we tried Procore for 6 months last year. The thing is so bloated for what we actually need on site daily, we switched back to Buildertrend and saved about $800 a month. Does anyone else feel like the big software names just get recommended because of marketing budgets?

That time a foreman told me my takeoff software was garbage and he was dead right

I've been using Yardi for takeoffs on a job down in Tucson for about 8 months now. This old school foreman, Mike, saw me struggling with a concrete square footage estimate and just laughed. He said 'son, that program's gonna get you every time because it doesn't handle slope right.' I told him I'd been using it fine for years. But after 3 messed up pour orders and a $2,000 overrun on a slab last Thursday, I went back and checked. Sure enough, the software was rounding off a 3 degree slope to flat. Mike watched me redo it by hand and the numbers came out totally different. Has anyone else had a routine update or default setting in their estimating software screw you on something you thought was solid?

Took me 4 months to admit Procore was worth the price tag

I fought our office manager on the $500/month subscription for a year, kept saying our spreadsheets worked fine. Then after we switched, I timed a single RFI cycle at 45 minutes instead of the usual 3 hours. Has anyone else seen their submittal review time actually drop after switching to a centralized platform?

How did my crew spend 6 hours on something that should've taken 2?

I'm looking at our time tracking in Procore from last week on a small commercial job in Denver. One of my crews logged 6 hours for a task I know takes 2 max, installing simple drop ceiling grids. I think they're padding their hours because they know I don't check the field reports against the schedule every day. Has anyone else caught this kind of thing slipping through with their construction software?

PSA: Stop trusting auto-takeoff on your drone mapping software

I've been flying drone surveys for a construction site outside Denver for about 6 months now. Kept getting these weird gaps in my orthomosaic maps and couldn't figure out why. Turns out the auto-takeoff feature in my flight planning app was launching the drone before the GPS had a full lock. That was causing the first 15-20 images to be off by like 8 feet in positioning. I caught it after 4 flights of bad data and a $200 redo of a foundation layout. Has anyone else had to disable auto-takeoff to get clean RTK data?

Can we talk about Procore crashing mid-inspection yesterday?

I was out on a job site in Nashville doing a final walkthrough on a 12 unit apartment build and Procore just froze up on me. Lost all my notes from the last 45 minutes because the autosave apparently wasn't working. Had to redo everything from memory and the GC was standing there tapping his foot the whole time. Anyone else have this happen or is it just my luck with bugs?

Had to pick between Procore and PlanGrid for our crew in Austin last spring

I went with Procore because the field supervisor wanted the daily log feature, and now 6 months later I'm wondering if PlanGrid's offline access would have saved us during that week of spotty wifi at the warehouse site - anyone else run into this choice and regret it?

Watched a demo of Procore's new field reporting feature last week

I sat in on a demo at a builders' meetup in Austin and they showed how you can snap photos right from the app and it auto fills the location and time on a daily log. Has anyone tried rolling this out with subs who aren't super tech savvy?

Had my GC tell me "just use the free version" of Procore for a 40-unit job

Talked with a GC about takeoff software and it hit different

I had coffee with a GC last Tuesday who told me he still does all his takeoffs by hand on printed plans. He said he tried Procore once but hated it because it slowed him down. That got me thinking about how much time I spend learning new programs versus just getting the work done. He does 20+ projects a year with just a scale ruler and a highlighter. Made me wonder if we rely too much on software for things that worked fine before. Has anyone else run into old-school guys who make you question your whole workflow?

Hot take: Procore’s submittal tool works way better if you bulk upload first

Ngl I spent like 6 months manually entering each submittal item one by one on a hospital job outside Phoenix. Then my PM showed me you can import a CSV with the whole schedule of values in 10 minutes. Took me maybe 2 tries to match the column headers right but after that it saved like 8 hours a week. Anyone else’s team sleeping on the import feature?

Spent 45 minutes trying to export a simple takeoff from Bluebeam

Went to a job site over near the Franklin Industrial Park yesterday and the estimator was losing his mind trying to get a PDF takeoff out of Bluebeam Revu. The software kept freezing every time he tried to change the scale. Has anyone else had this issue where it just locks up on you mid-count?

Watched a foreman fight with Procore for 20 minutes straight

I was at a job site near Austin last week and the foreman spent almost half an hour trying to get a stupid daily report to submit. The app kept crashing and wiping his comments every time he hit save. Has anyone else had Procore just eat their data like that?

Stopped doing manual takeoffs last month and it's a game changer

I used to print out blueprints and highlight everything by hand. Took me like 4 hours for a basic commercial job. Then a buddy showed me Bluebeam's auto-count feature. Now I do the same job in under an hour. Just trace the walls and it counts everything for me. My eyes don't hurt anymore from staring at lines all day. Anyone else switch from paper to digital takeoffs recently?

Bluebeam vs. PlanGrid for RFI tracking - which side are you on?

I used Bluebeam for 2 years on a hospital job in Cleveland and loved the markup tools, but last month I tried PlanGrid on a smaller school project and the mobile RFI workflow was way faster for subs in the field. Am I crazy for thinking one is clearly better for big jobs vs. small ones, or does it just depend on whether you're in the office or on site?

Pro tip: switched to Procore for job cost tracking and saw my budget variance drop from 12% to 4% in one quarter

Three months ago I was still running cost tracking through spreadsheets and QuickBooks. Kept having subs come back saying materials were way over what I estimated. Switched everything over to Procore's job costing module and linked it to my material orders. Now I see real time updates when lumber prices shift or a supplier adds a surcharge. That 8% swing saved me about $3,500 on a $45k bathroom remodel. Any of you guys using dedicated cost tracking software or still patching together manual systems?

Talked with a structural engineer about how we estimate jobs and it messed with my head a little

I was grabbing coffee last week with a buddy who does structural engineering on big commercial buildings. He was telling me how their firm switched over to some new estimating software that hooks into the BIM model directly. I run a small crew doing residential remodels, so I'm still over here using a spreadsheet I built myself in 2016 and a roll of paper. He said something that stuck with me: "You guys are pricing your time, not your risk." At first I thought that was just corporate speak, but then he explained how they build in contingency for every unknown variable. Made me realize I've been eating the cost of surprises like bad drywall or hidden rot for years. Anyone else out there run a small shop ever try to factor stuff like that into a quote without scaring off homeowners?

TIL switching to PlanGrid saved my team 10 hours a week on submittal reviews

I run a 12-man crew on a commercial job in Austin and we were drowning in PDF markups until I tried PlanGrid three months ago. The difference in RFI turnaround time from paper to digital was insane, like cutting two days down to four hours. Has anyone else seen that kind of change with a different platform?

Had a talk with an old PM in Dallas that flipped my view on field reports

I was on site last Tuesday in Dallas and this old pro named Dave saw me fighting with our reporting software. He pulled me aside and said "son, you're tracking too much junk nobody reads." He showed me his system - just 3 key numbers per day plus one photo of the biggest problem. I cut my reporting time from 45 minutes down to 12 and the GC actually reads them now. Anybody else's field guys spending way too long on useless data entry?

Hit 500 users on our job site tracking app this month

I started using a small construction management program back in February for our residential builds in Denver. This month we crossed 500 active users across our crews and subs. That number surprised me because I only rolled it out to 3 guys on one job site at first. Now my foreman says the punch list completion rate jumped 30% since everyone can see real time updates. Has anyone else seen adoption numbers climb faster than you expected with a new software rollout?

My $500 drone survey missed a 4 foot drainage pipe on a job site

I was running a site prep in Denver last month and figured I'd save time with a drone mapping tool instead of walking the whole lot. The software flagged everything fine above ground, but a crew member tripped into a buried pipe that wasn't on the model. Learned the hard way that aerial data can't catch underground stuff unless you feed it manual inputs or ground radar. Has anyone else had a survey tool miss something obvious like that?

Why does nobody talk about hitting 500 material takeoffs in a year

I was looking at my Procore dashboard the other day and nearly spit out my coffee when I saw I did 512 material takeoffs this year. That's like 10 a week if you count holidays and stuff. It really hit me how much time I could have saved if I had automated some of the repetitive measurements (like the drywall and rebar ones). I'm using a mix of Bluebeam and Planswift right now but neither of them talk to each other. Has anyone else here tried setting up custom formulas to speed up their takeoff workflow?

My foreman called out my digital takeoff at lunch yesterday

He said I was spending too much time clicking around in Bluebeam when a good old tape measure would have been faster on that weird corner lot. Made me wonder if I am leaning too hard on the software for simple stuff. Anyone else have an old timer call them out on using digital tools the wrong way?

Noticed estimators are leaning too hard on AI takeoffs lately

Was on a job site in Portland last month and the project manager was arguing with the software's output for 20 minutes. It double counted some windows and missed a whole wall. Has anyone else had to redo a full takeoff because the AI got lazy?

Vent: When my PM told me my beautiful Gantt chart was 'too artsy'

I spent a whole afternoon making this color-coded Procore schedule with gradient bars and custom icons for each trade. My project manager took one look and said 'this looks like a kindergarten art project, give me the dates in a spreadsheet.' I switched to just plain text cells with conditional formatting after that and honestly it's way faster to update. Has anyone else had their fancy software touches shot down by a boss who just wants the raw data?