Just to be clear; the Webster’s definition of “collaboration” is:

“to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor”

So how well do your software tools measure up?

It’s fashionable for software companies to create marketing hype by using the adjective, “collaborative” when describing their respective software applications. The question becomes, is the declaration of supporting a collaborative work environment fact or fiction? To answer that question, you need to look at the problem you are trying to solve. Think about how your team can be working together in the most productive manor possible. Does the application you are evaluating check the boxes?

Collaboration for construction firms can provide countless benefits in any number of disciplines within the building lifecycle. For now, software development organizations have mostly focused on creating a collaborative environment during the design phase of a project. Those solutions allow the entire design team to be contributing to the design phase, simultaneously, allowing the team to see the results of their decisions in real-time.   

A phase within the construction lifecycle that has historically been underserved, in regard to collaboration, is the bidding phase. In fact, most estimating systems don’t allow multiple estimators, each with their respective areas of expertise, to be contributing to the same estimate at the same time. Instead, each team member works in their own environment (file), requiring last minute merging of data to arrive at a final composite estimate.

In many cases, tying to “close-out” either a “negotiated” or “hard” bid, requires a team of individuals inputting, analyzing, and selecting the right mix of subcontractors. BidMatrix, developed by Bridgetown Software, Inc. creates a truly collaborative environment for the entire bidding team. What does that collaborative environment look like? Below are just a couple of examples the collaborative bidding environment made possible with BidMatrix:

As the “bid captain” I always know where my team is currently working within the bid, in this 

case, David Martin is working in the site utilities bid package, and the John Parks is working in 

the concrete bid package.

Even within a single bid package, I can see in real-time, the subcontractor bids as they are

being entered by each of my team members.