If the idea of changing the way you work breaks you out into a cold sweat, you aren’t alone. But like C.S. Lewis said, “We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”
For growth, change is inevitable. And though you can anticipate bumps along the way, switching your construction estimating software doesn’t have to be a nightmare when you have a solid plan in place.
Take The Beck Group for example. They provide an integrated approach to construction and are passionate about positively changing the way we approach the built environment. With multiple regional offices, each with its own design and preconstruction team, The Beck Group’s estimating teams had regional autonomy and “the freedom to implement their own innovative practices” as Brent Pilgrim, National Director of Preconstruction at The Beck Group puts it. Though they had some standardization of the precon process, it was decentralized.
The Beck Group’s precon teams had been using Sage Timberline and Excel for over 10 years and had about 275 to 300 assemblies and over 1,500 line items. Some at The Beck Group were very invested in the development of Sage and highly resistant to change.
Learn how to manage change during a software implementation.
Yet, as an integrated firm, The Beck Group was looking toward the future and how the industry was changing. “We were looking at a new era of preconstruction,” says Brent.
Though Timberline had served them well, Brent says they were asking, “How could we position ourselves from a technology standpoint to better capitalize on more integrated type of work?” That solution was DESTINI Estimator construction estimating software.
The benefits of DESTINI Estimator for The Beck Group are its support of model-based estimating and a target value design workflow, the continuity of estimating, and consolidating their software costs.
But implementing enterprise software across multiple offices is a big endeavor and without a plan, Brent knew things wouldn’t go smoothly. To switch from Sage to DESTINI Estimator successfully, Brent and his team developed a one-year implementation plan in a phased approach.
Brent says you can’t just “flip the switch” by turning off Sage and turning on DESTINI Estimator. The first phase is getting buy-in from the bottom up and from the top down. He calls it the “evangelist process.”
Define Your Purpose
You want the users of the new software to be excited. Be clear about how the new software will make the precon process more efficient and the part they will play in improving the industry.
Present the Plan
Brent provided the detailed implementation plan to each precon group starting the training process one office at a time.
Migrate Your Data Over From Sage to DESTINI Estimator
Have your most excited and tech-savvy precon team members help and work alongside Beck Technology to build your database. This step means that leadership needs to recognize allocating time to the implementation and committing to it.
Roll Out Your Training Plan
Brent took 2 ½ days in each office to train estimators on DESTINI Estimator. He says he focused on replacing “like for like functionality” instead of teaching all of Estimator’s functions. During this two-day training, estimators learned how to create an estimate, make assemblies, estimate and data management, and using the takeoff feature in Estimator.
Host Weekly Check-ins
Brent had weekly meetings with DESTINI Estimator users to hear what was happening in the software, the progress teams were making, and any challenges The Beck Group estimators were having.
Beyond that, Brent developed a monthly progress report to provide to leadership which detailed the DESTINI Estimator implementation progress.
In one year, all of The Beck Group’s offices were trained and creating new projects in DESTINI Estimator.
To learn more about the best practices in preconstruction software implementation, read the following articles:
- Implementing DESTINI Estimator Preconstruction Software
- How to Make Software Implementation Easier
- 4 Steps to Ensure Successful DESTINI Estimator Software Implementation
In closing, Brent says you need both the risk takers and the more conservative types to provide the balance in utilizing the most out of DESTINI Estimator. The risk takers are there to push the technology to see what it can do, while the others are making sure the data is accurate and standardizing best practices and workflows. He says, “You’ve got to push the envelope of the technology otherwise you’ll just stay where you’re at and that’s a huge variable in terms of growing your capabilities with the application.”
