e-Builder

eBuilder has allowed the City of Sunnyvale Public Works Engineering Division to get out of time consuming and inefficient paper workflows and jump into web based project management.
Being able to access project data online from anywhere and at any time gives our inspectors, project managers and executives immediate boost in making better assessments and decisions.
eBuilder costs more than some other off the shelf software packages to implement and adopt but its software is customizable. Through guidance and hard work during implementation and adoption, the City managed to mirror existing workflows, procedures and authorizations into eBuilder modules and processes. The offered Cost, Schedule, Reporting, Dashboards and other modules allows us to manage projects data, costs, schedules in a much more efficient way than we ever used to.
We spent valuable time in ensuring that project data includes the fields that we want to report on and create executive dashboards for. Currently we can generate reports in seconds and our executive dashboards update automatically. Ease of tweaking reports to meet specific needs cannot be underestimated in terms of time efficiency. This is so much easier than sorting, cutting, pasting and generating charts with an excel spreadsheet.
Currently we have all out projects in ebuilder. Use of eBuilder has made our lives so much easier especially in construction since our RFIs, RFQs, change orders preauthorization, changes orders, progress payments and submittals are all processed electronically via eBuilder customized processes. Use of digital signature and digital routing has saved us so much time in printing paper, manual signatures, scanning, emailing, filing, etc. After using eBuilder, project records that needed a whole filing cabinet drawer in the past shrunk to a mere 1 thick folder!
Our lead Admin has learned how to customize eBuilder so we are continuously improving our processes to make our jobs more efficient.
I must add that eBuilder 24-hour customer support service is the best free service we have received from anyone. The support service will take your call at any time and do their best to help you without any complaints. They have made needed adjustments after adoption so much easier without costing the City a dime.
In conclusion, the City of Sunnyvale is very pleased with eBuilder. The City Manager and Council are very pleased with the Engineering adoption of technology and use of eBuilder.

I am a Materials Coordinator. Per my Agency's format- I am mostly in folders: Progress Photos ("04"-07); 03-01-09; 03-08 through 12-all subfolders; 03-16-01-all subfolders; 03-16 & 17-all subfolders. I look at submittals via Submittal Register. Processes I use most is consultant daily activity report (DR_) and equipment report (DARCA).

Pros

It is a method to get at much info into an electronic format. As in the Microsoft Office software, the method of entering info into e-Builder vary from Process to Submittal, etc. In short, no consistency. I use the file naming convention format for record keeping for non-e-Builder projects.

Cons

Unable to get a simple Excel list of file names, with upload date (a harmonica), found in a folder directly from e-Builder software. It drives me nuts I can only see two or three documents in the tiny window when I do materials review & file naming consistency. I create my own Excel sheet manually. I select an individual document, "Properties", copy the file name into an Excel spreadsheet-repeat steps.
When a log can be created directly from e-Builder (an orchestra), it is in WORD (useless for sorting) in narrow columns stuffing long file names in multiple rows & extra useless verbiage filling the remaining columns. It can be edited, with the time wasted doing that, create an Excel spreadsheet manually.
In the file naming convention, there is no File TYPE ID to identify material certification info (photo of object's marking, pdf of paper tag, cutsheet) collected in the field. Currently I use "MS_" for "Materials Sh**t." Sorting by "MS_" brings up lots of "Miscellaneous" documents when doing closeout review. Adding suffice "TAG_" would help; it appears to not conflict with the current file naming File TYPE IDs.

Advice to Others

Regarding survey-not sure my star ratings & overall number rating will take. The stars kept disappearing when I went to the next rating.