HCSS HeavyBid

Pros

This tool is very powerful. Given good input data/information, cost management and projection have been revolutionized. As a project manager, I find this tool to be highly valuable. The future of construction management is bright.

Cons

HCSS has heavily marketed this to upper management at construction companies as a tool to be used in the field by foremen to enter all information needed to track all project costs. The selling point is that all data entry is completed by the time it reaches the project engineer/manager so that those employees can spend their time reviewing the data - data which has already been analyzed for you by the HeavyJob tool.
The problem here is how much time and effort it takes to manage the foremen and the data/information that they submit. "Garbage in, garbage out" comes to mind. A project management team cannot use this as a tool for cost management if the information upfront is not good. A lot of time and money is spent managing the information input and less time on the information output, as HeavyJob is marketed. Most of what I have seen are construction companies using HeavyJob as a "glorified electronic timecard," when it really can do so much more.
I am hopeful that with new generations of foremen coming up through the ranks, we will eventually get there, but it will take a while, unless your company is willing to invest in a lot of foremen training (and follow up training).

Advice to Others

1) Decide how you want to use this tool in your company. Do not spend the money if you are just buying for an electronic timecard system. If you have dedicated staff members who want to put in the time to really get to the nitty gritty of construction costs for the long term betterment of your company, then this system is for you.
2) Do not take an all or nothing approach to the system's implementation. It is going to take time. Plan and budget for a lot of training and refresher courses. Introduce the foremen to the features over time, not all at once.
3) Know what information you want to get out of the tool before you set up the job (so much of that is key to getting the setup correct and knowing what to input over the course of your project; you might as well revert back to only using this as a glorified timecard if your setup is not done right).

Pros

Product: This is a very fast, user-friendly, automated estimating and bidding system that is particularly effective for Unit-Price contracts. It allows quick creation of accurate estimates, accommodates variations in quantities, allows risk evaluation on an item-by-item basis, and provides the means to price individual bid items so that they reflect the bidder's assessments of quantity, value, and risk for each item.

Vendor: HCSS sets the standard for customer support. There is no software company anywhere, of any type, with whom I have had contact that comes even close to the responsiveness and excellence of HCSS' technical support. It is extremely rare that a call is not answered before the third ring by a human who understands the problem (no matter how arcane) and who has the right answer, without sending me to a second- or third-level technician. The professionalism and expertise of the Technical Support team are near-perfect. I tell people whom I am training that if they get stuck on a problem for more than three minutes, they should call Tech Support. The person who answers will have the problem solved, and the estimator will be back in production nearly instantaneously.

Cons

There is little to dislike in a system that works so well and with a technical support team that is so knowledgeable. HCSS takes suggestions from its users and implements them in new releases of the software so that the system is always cutting-edge and fulfills its users' expectations. The system seems expensive to purchase and maintain, at least to the non-using evaluator, but the confidence in the accuracy of the estimate, the outstanding technical support, and the continuous improvement of the software will provide confidence that offsets cost. One caught and corrected mistake that that would have gone unnoticed without HeavyBid's analysis tools, could pay for a dozen licenses for years.

Advice to Others

Try it. Make some estimates, and make some calls to Tech Support. Compare the analysis reports, the ease of estimating and pricing, and the confidence you have in your estimate with whatever estimating method you are presently using. Also, talk to any other contractors you may know (particularly those who regularly bid projects worth $10 million to $500 million); you'll discover that most of them are using HeavyBid for their own estimates. HeavyBid outperforms every aspect of every other estimating system and makes spreadsheet bidding seem absolutely archaic. This software gives me the bid advantage of confidence, as well as the bid advantage of correct pricing. I wish all my competitors would use it. The chance of losing a bid because of someone else's mistake offsets the improved sophistication my competitors would gain.