Updating Your Estimating Software—Truebeck Case Study

Truebeck Construction’s value— “Courageously, make ideas reality” encourages the mindset to pioneer new ideas. Established in 2007 with four offices in California and Oregon, Truebeck is a top 10 general contractor in the Bay Area, an ENR Top 100 Construction Management-at-Risk-Firms, ENR Top 100 Design-Build Firms, and an ENR Top 400 Contractor. Truebeck is a contractor dedicated to making the built environment better by focusing on providing the best solutions and improving “traditional construction practices.”  

Their pledge is: “Build with a genuine passion and seek possibilities. Pioneer ideas that improve industry practices and elevate standards. Work to give the best possible service, quality, and value, while making the journey fun and memorable.” 

To do that, Truebeck needed a better solution to their estimating workflows.  

The Challenge

Truebeck had been using Sage Timberline and Excel for their estimating process and experienced many of the same problems and issues that other general contractors have using legacy software.  

For those of you who still use Timberline, we’re sure you can relate when Jim Murphy, Preconstruction Executive at Truebeck says “Timberline was always out of date, hard to use, had horrible reporting, and an old-school DOS-based estimating system.” Support from Sage was also non-existent.  

One of the measures of success in the construction industry is the ability to help solve problems – Truebeck, a premier general contractor on the West Coast, delivers the best solutions and value through creative and progressive solutions. Truebeck’s preconstruction department knew that Sage was not the future of driving those solutions. 

They knew they needed to update their estimating system with three goals in mind: 

1. Standardize the systems, including open API access. 
2. Have an integrated system that includes takeoff, model-based estimating, and historical cost tracking that integrated with their other software.  
3. Streamline their workflows. 

Truebeck’s team formed a committee and looked at Beck Technology’s DESTINI Estimator, WinEst, ProEst, Cost OS, and Procore’s Esticom.  

Two members of Truebeck’s precon team had been through the transition to DESTINI Estimator at a previous company and came with experience with the implementation process and using the software.  

The committee spent time analyzing each of the software and weighing the pros and cons of Timberline in comparison to DESTINI Estimator and ProEst. They used a color-coded system—red (bad), yellow (watch), and green (good)—to rate each software.  

Jim says, “DESTINI had the most green, with a few yellows, but the yellows were solvable issues.” After working with Beck Technology to solve these issues, Truebeck chose DESTINI Estimator. 

The Solution

The database-driven estimating software, DESTINI Estimator integrates with Procore, so those two features alone killed two birds with one stone in facing Truebeck’s challenges. Further, DESTINI Estimator’s project tab, dashboards, and Excel integrations help the precon team make accurate, and faster conceptual estimates. These primary features attracted Truebeck to Beck Technology.  

During implementation, Truebeck’s team sat down and reorganized their database. With Beck Tech’s implementation team, Truebeck “now has a database that is well organized, with added trade scopes, and completely synced from our formats to MasterFormat to Uniformat to Bid Package naming to our internal cost coding,” Jim says, “This was a huge feat that is paying dividends.”  

Truebeck also created 10 assemblies during the implementation process and are currently working on building more.  

The Results

When asked what Truebeck’s preconstruction team has been able to accomplish since implementing DESTINI Estimator, Jim listed their favorite features and how DESTINI Estimator has helped them with their goals: 

1. Template estimates. This is a favored feature, as templates help keep estimates standardized across multiple offices. 
2. Data Points and ability to create internal dashboards. These can differentiate precon teams from competitors by managing and predicting outcomes for clients. 
3. Ability to easily track alternates, options, and different locations. The connection to the DESTINI Dashboards eliminates the use of “Excel” spreadsheets needed to manage the preconstruction process. DESTINI Estimator provides automatic data sorting and captures cost history data quickly, consistently, and efficiently. 
4. Team estimating. This is a big deal compared to Timberline. With DESTINI Estimator multiple users can be in one estimate at the same time. 
5. Ability to filter estimates. (Jim’s personal favorite feature.) 
6. Organization. The project tab provides a consistent way to track information in an estimate, which leads to more accurate benchmarking and historical tracking of information. 
7. Rate tables. The rate tables are much easier to use in DESTINI Estimator and easy to apply multiple rate tables within an estimate. 
8. Reporting. Output is consistent, aligned with branding, and visually appealing. 
   

 “From day one, this was an incredible group to work with.” -Beck Technology Account Executive 

Winning the 2023 Vision Award, John Reich, Beck Technology Customer Success Leader says, “Truebeck is truly working to help their customers thrive and wants to leverage their data to tell the story of their projects. They push the limits of what DESTINI Estimator can do and are always looking to add new enhancements to their current workflows.”  

With the revolutionary construction estimating software, DESTINI Estimator, we are excited about the future of Truebeck and our continued partnership with them.