Web Exclusive: Case Study: Streamlining Bids
June 26, 2008
Before work began on the Kasold Drive project in Lawrence, Kansas, the existing asphalt road showed signs of failure because it had been deteriorating during the last 20 years.
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Branden Boyd spent a lot of years estimating projects with pencil and paper. But the project manager at R.D. Johnson Excavating Company of Lawrence, Kansas, knew there must be a more efficient, effective and strategic way to work. And he needed to find that way to bid the larger projects the company was chasing.
The crew templates in BID2WIN’s software allowed R.D. Johnson’s estimators to eliminate redundant data entry and easily re-bid the project after the city changed its budget.
R.D. Johnson Excavating has been in business for more than 20 years performing earthmoving and land improvement projects. The contractor offers an extensive range of services, including site grading, ditching, drainage, land clearing, wrecking and demolition, trenching, asphalt paving, utility line installation and sidewalk construction.
“Bidding larger projects created a need to switch to an estimating software package for ease of maintenance, organization, tracking and thoroughness,” Boyd says. He was accustomed to spending painstaking hours preparing each bid on paper. Then he had to manually locate paper files for past bids and historical cost information.
As the primary estimator for R.D. Johnson, Boyd says he has had “the luxury to use a few different estimating software packages” over the years. In his opinion, BID2WIN was the easiest and most user-friendly estimating software package on the market. So R.D. Johnson purchased BID2WIN Estimating & Bidding in January 2006. Boyd now builds estimates quickly and efficiently, and the software automatically saves his estimates and bids. Plus, a centralized resource database--including labor, equipment, crews, materials, etc.--allows all of R.D. Johnson’s estimators to work with the same standard cost information, as well as standard cost structures created by estimating managers.
R.D. Johnson Excavating was contracted for the Kasold Drive project in Lawrence, Kansas, a project fraught with hurdles, including the construction of concrete retaining walls designed to contain a 20-foot grade change in the street grade.
Since it began using BID2WIN, R.D. Johnson Excavating has experienced great results, as demonstrated by the Kasold Drive project in the city of Lawrence. The half-mile-long project consisted of street, storm sewer and water line improvements and included the removal of existing asphalt pavement, widening of the street to four lanes with a median and installation of a $2-million retaining wall. “We bid the project and were low, but the project was over budget,” Boyd says. “The city of Lawrence decided to bid the project again and, with the minor changes they made to the plans to meet the budget, we ended up being low again.”
A major milestone for the city of Lawrence, the Kasold Drive project was ultimately recognized as a 2007 Project of the Year by the Kansas Chapter of the American Public Works Association (APWA) in the $2-10 million transportation project category.
Ultimately, the Kasold Drive project was recognized as a 2007 Project of the Year by the Kansas Chapter of the American Public Works Association (APWA) in the $2-10 million transportation project category. The project provided an example of excellence in public works, while proving that a streamlined bidding process notably paid off for R.D. Johnson. “The biggest return on investment that we have experienced [using BID2WIN] was on this 5.4-million-dollar project,” Boyd says.
Manufacturer Information
BID2WIN Software Inc., www.bid2win.com
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