As 2020 comes to a close, it’s clear that innovations and technological updates to the preconstruction industry have increased more than ever. Obviously, this isn’t much of a surprise, especially as there was an increased need for remote work capabilities. One of these recent innovations has been automatic pricing.
When precon professionals start building an estimate, there’s usually some amount of takeoff involved – such as takeoff on drawings, tied to quantities and line items in the estimate. Most of the time, these are separate things. You start out doing some takeoff and then you come back to associate these with line items that already exist in the estimate to set the takeoff. That’s where automatic pricing comes in. The concept is that your estimating tool should be smart enough to automatically add the line item for you, take the properties from the takeoff, and build that into the quantities of the line item.
This idea was brought by several clients to Beck Technology as a means of improving the features available in DESTINI Estimator. Beck Technology’s development team brought it to their Innovations Lab, where they were able to collaborate and begin working on an automatic pricing feature. Ideally, the feature will save estimators a significant amount of time, freeing them up to focus on higher value activities.
As we continue moving into the future, don’t forget that your feedback is essential, and can shape not only the preconstruction industry but the trends that affect it.
