For many roadbuilders still today, says Webb, “they usually don’t find out for a week or more on the work that they actually did, to see if they can correct a problem. It’s just a tough market to watch your profit bleed away because of not knowing what’s going on with your job,” he says. “We have a piece of software called HeavyJob that specifically helps contractors keep track of what’s going on with the job and tells them every day how they are doing compared to the budget.”

In the transportation sector, “we’ve seen a lot of people take advantage of this downturn to take a look at their efficiencies within their companies,” says McGough. “As a lot of contractors have had to lay people off, they have turned to software and the efficiency of stopping double and triple entry, and are really looking at their processes. Our challenge at least is that: Take a look at your processes. See where you can use those people elsewhere in your organization and replace some of those repetitive processes with a good, solid suite of products.”

Concurs competitor McKeon: “In this climate, economically particularly, these tools are even more important than they have been in the past in terms of controlling profitability. Today, the margins are tight, and if you don’t have a strong handle on your costs, you’re not going to be successful winning bids,” he says, “and you’re certainly not going to be successful making those bids turn into profitable jobs.” v

A bidding tip: Shuffle the Deck

Could it be the modern-day roadbuilding bidding equivalent of that old Chicago street tradition,“Vote early and vote often”?

“Many roadbuilders now will actually bid the job as a prime, but also turn around and take a certain amount of the work, say the concrete work on the job, and bid it as a sub to another contractor, thus trying a couple of different angles to get work on the particular job,” says Tom Webb, HCSS vice president of technical services. “That’s another area in which the software that they use can help make them more efficient, because you can pre-set all that work to where, on Bid Day, you’re just closing out your bid and you have an option to send it in as a prime and send it in as a subpackage to other primes bidding on the same job.”

Can’t win if you’re not in . . . and in . . . and in . . .