General contractors manage every facet of construction projects. They take the blueprints, renderings, and project timelines from architects and engineers and turn them into reality on a building site.
Contractors also rely on tools for managing subcontractors and materials more effectively. Contractor business software helps strengthen field-to-office collaboration while eliminating miscommunication caused by paperwork, email, and phone.
If you’d like to increase your construction business’ productivity, you should consider utilizing a high-quality software program, like Bridgit software.
Table of Contents
Project Management
As a general contractor, you oversee multiple projects and tasks at any one time. With the appropriate software in place, you can streamline processes to increase efficiency while keeping tabs on various aspects of your business, such as bid tracking, customer service requests, and cost estimation.
Success when streamlining processes lies in keeping teams aligned and communicating efficiently. Utilize RACI charts to assign ownership for various task roles and implement new, standardized workflows.
Furthermore, be sure to regularly back up data so if something goes wrong, you can quickly restore it; this will reduce unexpected downtime and boost productivity.
Finally, select software solutions with appropriate licensing options which meet your requirements.
Scheduling
General contractor software solutions should address specific areas of pain for your construction business. Depending on its purposes, such as tracking key documents or providing bidding, accounting, job costing, and construction takeoff capabilities – the right general contractor software solutions can address them all effectively.
An effective solution can assist with planning building projects based on completion dates and budgets while monitoring subcontractors and employees. Furthermore, it will identify any delays so you stay on track to meet revenue goals.
General contractor software comes in various licensing options, from single-user licenses to multi-user and enterprise. You should carefully consider your business needs when deciding upon an affordable, scalable solution with the features you require.
Time Tracking
Optimizing profits is essential to any entrepreneur, solo contractor, or small to mid-sized service business’s success, yet determining which projects are profitable or how much your team is spending can be challenging. A general contractor software program can assist with collecting, analyzing, and using time-tracking data for productivity increases and increased profits.
Utilizing this program, you can monitor your team’s billable utilization reports and identify areas for improvement. Furthermore, this data can also help optimize client billing to ensure clients are charged only for hours worked.
While employees may resist tracking their time, managers must communicate how this data will be utilized so as to reduce resistance and gain buy-in from employees, so they can focus on providing quality work while meeting both professional and personal goals.
Invoicing
Invoicing can also be optimized to increase productivity and profit. To do so successfully, document your current process to identify which steps can be eliminated or automated to make it more efficient – this way, you’ll get paid faster!
The ideal general contractor software should be user-friendly and feature-rich. Furthermore, it should integrate seamlessly with other business software programs for improved workflows while offering reliable customer service support.
AI-powered construction estimation software can help general contractors improve productivity by automating manual, error-prone tasks. Furthermore, AI construction estimation software enables them to win more work by decreasing preparation times for bids – freeing estimators up to focus on higher-value projects.
Estimating
Construction estimating software removes the guesswork associated with manual processes and helps create accurate estimates quickly, saving time and allowing you to win more projects.
Preconstruction software can facilitate bidding by providing access to databases of material pricing and production rates that can help estimate teams easily locate price discrepancies while meeting key project deadlines.
Contractors can leverage preconstruction software to support collaborative design and build processes, helping with constructability reviews, clash detection and resolution, and speedy project schedules – saving millions in dollars, speeding up completion timeframes, and streamlining project completion timelines.
Improved communication between office staff and field workers also helps eliminate adversarial relationships which impede productivity.