Poor project planning is costing you and your teams. On average most construction projects are barely able to break past a 2% gross profit margin. The best way to protect profit margins is by up-leveling processes with tools that automate the estimating process, allowing estimators to visualize and create accurate estimates using historical project data. The ability to use data to produce accurate estimates can mean the difference between winning or losing the project in the first place.
Autodesk Takeoff is a cloud-based quantification solution that empowers estimators to generate 2D and 3D takeoffs from a single platform to create accurate estimates and competitive bids faster. The software Autodesk Takeoff helps streamline the takeoff process on a unified platform, improving how estimators increase the quality of their estimates and bids.
To improve stakeholder accountability, we’ve created a unified solution to connect workflows that enable our customers to work more efficiently. Connected workflows are used to coordinate tasks between people and keep information and systems in sync. They play a significant role in executing tasks and bringing projects to life, which is why it’s important to optimize them.
With a unified platform, people, processes, and data are connected, mitigating issues resulting from disjointed solutions. The result is projects that stay on schedule and budget.
“Having a unified platform where workflows and data are connected increases visibility across project stakeholders,” says Hung Nguyen, Senior Virtual Design Construction Process Manager at Herrero Builders. “By bringing all parties and workflows together on a single platform, we can make more informed decisions and improve the efficiency of communication and collaboration.”
We surveyed a handful of our customers to find out how Autodesk’s quantification solution will help them win more work. The answers ranged from improved user management to creating more competitive and accurate bids – but the theme of connected data remained consistent across all responses.
With seamless access to data, estimators can utilize Autodesk Takeoff to win more work by:
By centralizing project data, teams can improve workflows through ease of access to information. This saves time and frees up estimating resources to focus on other areas of the quantification process.
“The benefit of using the cloud for takeoffs is that we have access to data across devices and teams,” says John Maguire, Project Engineer at Barton Malow. “This allows teams to work off the same design and ensure quantities aren’t missed while maximising efficiencies.”
With a centralized location for project data, teams can feel confident using the most up-to-date information for takeoffs. Additionally, with a unified solution for 2D and 3D takeoffs, teams can review quantities with complete transparency to understand budget scope and trajectory and leverage that data for downstream procurement, self-perform, and production workflows.
Data is valuable and can provide a competitive advantage - when made into actionable insight - to bid on future projects by providing a benchmark to see how current costs compare to previous costs. With data accessible on a unified platform, teams can access data to help inform future bids.
“If done right, historical project data such as actual quantities, production time, and material costs can be used to bid more accurately on the next project,” says Andy Leek, Vice President - Technology & Innovation at PARIC Corporation. “Competitive bids are often impacted by fluctuating material costs, weather impacts, productivity, and the availability of labor resources. As the market evolves, data helps our teams bring more value, insight, and reliability to the table to remain competitive.”
With the ability to organize packages by scope of work, estimators can create a more efficient and streamlined takeoff process when working with multiple disciplines. This improves the accuracy of takeoffs, supports better decision-making, and prevents the risk of excessive budget overruns.
“Like any planned effort, spending time upfront to organize your data and workflows will pay dividends throughout the entire project lifecycle,” says Leek. “We have developed a particular logic for classifying our project data to categorize our datasets better to track changes and produce an accurate budget easily.”
Greater efficiencies are realized with the cluster capability in the 3D model viewer to perform takeoffs faster based on groupings of similar materials.
Clustering assets also allows data to be consumable at a high level. “By putting conditions into categories of trades, our estimators can easily toggle between the layers of the estimate and simplify the part of the takeoff they’re interested in,” adds Maguire.
Autodesk Takeoff empowers estimators to perform 2D and 3D quantification workflows from a common data environment to increase collaboration, speed, and accuracy during the quantification process, impacting estimating.
With data readily accessible on a unified platform, estimators can tackle takeoffs more efficiently and produce more accurate results leading to winning more work.
Leek shares that in addition to winning more bids, “Autodesk Takeoff will make the process more efficient and enable our preconstruction team to spend more time doing higher value efforts, and less time doing manual takeoffs.”
Learn more about how Autodesk Takeoff can help your teams increase collaboration, speed, and accuracy during the estimation process to produce competitive bids.
