Growing Your Business with DESTINI Estimator-Saunders Case Study

General contractors who invite innovation and embrace change are the ones who get ahead.

To invest that level of commitment takes dedication. It takes a determined team to put the wheels in motion to do what it takes to grow. Those general contractors taking advantage of the construction technologies available are producing safer, better projects on time and in budget. Those same general contractors are partnering with us, and together, we are changing the future.

The Challenge

Like most estimating teams, Saunders had been using Excel and while Excel works and is flexible, there are things an experienced person needs to do to work around Excel’s limitations.

Saunders had a team member who was building and coding Macros. Though the Macros were allowing Saunders to get more out of Excel, there was still only one person building and maintaining them.

Another problem was the estimating team was working in multiple workbooks and in a separate takeoff software. Too much time was spent toggling back and forth and searching for information. These low-value activities don’t add any extra value to owners. They don’t make you stand out from your competition.

With a single point of possible failure, only one person understood what was under the hood of how Saunders’ preconstruction team was estimating, and having to use multiple tools, the estimating team was finding it extremely difficult to capture their data in one place. There was no single source of reference to put together conceptual estimates.

To win more work and become more profitable, Saunders recognized the need for a more efficient way to work. DESTINI Estimator would provide Saunders with a much more robust system and would give the preconstruction team time to spend on high-value activities like value engineering, data analysis, and pursuing more projects.

The Solution

At the time, we were running a lot of large implementations simultaneously and Saunders’ scope of work required building 40 assemblies, which was a big lift. To get Saunders onboarded on time, we were going to need some help!

A senior preconstruction manager at Saunders, Kay Rasmussen, was interested in technology but also on her way to retirement. She stepped up to help build the assemblies. We taught her how to build the assemblies. Midway through the build, Kay retired but stayed on at Saunders as a contractor to finish the implementation. Doug Maiden, Customer Success Specialist says, “What Kay did was phenomenal.”

Saunders ended up turning over 50 complex assemblies for us to incorporate into DESTINI Estimator for them.

The Results

Saunders has now implemented our latest version of Automatic Pricing that cuts estimating time in half. Grant Stucker, preconstruction manager at Saunders, says "...the improved Automatic Pricing interface eliminates the number of clicks needed to both add and edit line items in the estimate, saving a lot of time alone. The cost information being readily available for review and updating has proven to be a great time saver as well. Having upfront access to our cost line item and assembly database has been critical toward accessing and building estimates faster with just as much reliability. All these combine into significant time savings without sacrificing accuracy."

Because Beck Technology aligns with the same vision as Saunders for future growth, not only did Saunders choose DESTINI Estimator for its enterprise-wide estimating software but a true partnership was created.