“Those who have knowledge, don’t predict.”

Lao Tzu, 6th century B.C. Chinese Philosopher

We recently had a contest in the office to guess how many pieces of candy were in a jar. The winner happened to be our Chief Estimator and Senior Implementation Specialist, Ray Zanon. He evaluated the space and believed that the jar had enough room for 122 pieces. To his disappointment (even though he had won), the actual number of pieces the judges were able to fit in the jar was 123. As estimators, you are tasked with making careful considerations of material and performance that provide a cost and profit for your company. Once you have submitted your estimate to the owner, how can you be sure that your foremen can live up to the production you put in your bid? Do you go back and compare job performance after completion? In this analogy of the candy, Ray discovered that his estimate was close but not exact. What would life be like for Ray if he already knew exactly how many pieces of candy would fit in that jar?

In particular, the question our trainers often get is, “Can HeavyBid help me estimate my activities using my actual crew performance?” The answer is, “Yes.”

There is an icon of a pair of binoculars on the upper-right corner of the Estimate Entry – Tree View that will launch the Cost History module. We created the Cost History to help you estimate current and future work by quickly scanning previous estimates for what an activity cost in the past.

Providing a historical cost comparison with how you bid your last job is a great start, but we can help you do even better. When you are ready for an advanced approach to historical cost analysis, the latest version of HeavyBid can connect you to your HeavyJob data to gather actual productivity from your current and past jobs. If you are currently using HeavyJob, your foremen are building this information for you with every new time card. You absolutely need to be using this data. Once you have set up this HeavyJob integration with HeavyBid, the binoculars button will change from the Cost History to the Production History.

The Production History will now present you with two options for analysis:

1. Estimate History (Classic Cost History): Search and use historical crew rates collected from the same activity in previous estimates.
2. Production History: Search job performance on activities that match cost codes, as reported by your foremen in HeavyJob.

Here is a demo of the features from our HeavyBid Product Manager, Greg Keenan. If you are not currently using this feature, I highly recommend reviewing the documentation on it and setting it up. Our support is here to help.

Pairing HeavyBid with HeavyJob requires that you are set up with an HCSS credentials account. This pairing will allow HeavyBid to engage your company’s production that is saved in HeavyJob.

Arthur Nix, HeavyBid Contract Trainer and founder of Estimating Workflow Solutions, LLC. has provided a great resource explaining the benefits of setting up your credentials:

For the more advanced Cost History users, click here to learn how to use the Simple and Advanced search functions of the Production History Search.

To see how HeavyJob is helping HCSS users maximize their effort, and protect their profit: Click HERE.