Construction management software is a fairly broad term referring to many different types of software solutions available to both owners and contractors in the construction industry to improve the outcome of a construction project or construction program. When evaluating the myriad of alternatives to Procore and leading cloud-based solutions for construction project management, it is important to consider 5 key attributes that will help you choose the best solution for your project or organization.
1) What Type of Organization is it Built For?
Owners, Contractors and Design organizations have different needs and require different capabilities in their construction management software. For example, Owners typically are looking for program management software that is designed to cover the entire project lifecycle including capital planning, design, procurement, construction and facility commissioning. In contrast, contractors often are looking for solutions that manage the process of pre-construction, construction and close-out. To date, no single solution has been able to meet the requirements of each party and the technology vendors have specialized solutions for each stakeholder.
Don’t be fooled by software vendors that position a single software application as being able to meet the requirements of owner, designer, contractor and specialty contractor. Why is this so important? Owners seek to deliver projects on-time, on-budget, and within scope while minimizing changes. Contractors in contrast seek to deliver the project on-time, with profit and are flexible to changes provided they are adequately compensated. These divergent requirements drive specialized features that would be in conflict with one another if they were in the same software solution.
Action: Ask your vendor: Who was this solution originally developed for? If they struggle to answer the question, keep looking.
Top Owner Construction Management Software
- e-Builder Enterprise
- Oracle Primavera Unifier
- Projectmates
Top Contractor Construction Management Software
- Trimble ProjectSight
- Autodesk PlanGrid
- Procore
2) Construction Management Also Means Managing Job Cost
The Construction Management Association of America defines the discipline of construction management quite well. According to CMAA, “construction management is a professional service that provides a project’s owner(s) with effective management of the project’s schedule, cost, quality, safety, scope, and function.” Today, the term construction management software is interchanged with project management, project controls, and collaboration among many others. However, when evaluating alternatives to Procore, it is important to consider all the capabilities your organization needs to properly manage construction.
Core to the best solutions available on the market today is the budget and cost management module. To be considered a professional grade construction management solution, the software must have a core foundation in managing job costs. The premise is simple but missed by so many vendors. What value is it to manage RFIs and Daily Reports extraordinary well if you can not capture the cost impact of issues and pending changes? You could end up with having managed thousands of RFIs but lost the profitability of your project because of cost overrun.
In today’s modern cloud-based construction management solutions, newer entrants are completely missing this vital capability leaving contractors to manage their project on Excel spreadsheets. Others are just recently developing lite job cost management solutions into their software. Don’t be fooled. Look for software that has proven budget and cost management modules that have been battle-tested over many years.
Action: Inspect (in detail) the budget and cost management capabilities when evaluating competitors to Procore. Some modern cloud solutions, like ProjectSight have been built using the litigation tested capabilities of their predecessor (in this case Meridian Prolog) and are considered one of the most trusted budget and cost management solutions available.
Top Owner Construction Management Software with Budget & Cost Management
- e-Builder Enterprise
- Oracle Primavera Unifier
- PMWeb
Top Contractor Construction Management Software with Budget & Cost Management
- Trimble ProjectSight
- Primavera Contract Manager
- Viewpoint One
3) Support for Connected Construction
Have you not heard of the term Connected Construction? Trimble coined this term many years ago and if you are currently looking for a Procore competitor for construction project management, this may be your one takeaway from this article. The future of construction management software is the automation of data collection and sharing. Let’s face it, so many so-called construction project management applications have been built around the concept of data collection. Construction professionals are asked to fill out form after form to record everything that happens on a construction site in the event something goes wrong.
That is not the future. Tools, machines, even materials are now smarter than ever before. If your smartphone can tell you exactly where you are at a precise time of day, why can’t construction equipment and tools? Leading manufacturers like Caterpillar, Hilte, and many others are adding technology to their equipment and tools that will send data to inform project management software. Job-site security, monitoring and laser scanning can update project management systems with data that provides objective evidence of progress. The best-connected construction systems even route RFIs, Submittals and cost information to an Owner’s Construction Management software so both contractor and owner can use (and own) their own data.
Action: Future proof your investment and leapfrog over solutions that merely digitize the old paper form paradigm. Choose cloud-based construction management software that has the vision to eliminate manual data collection through connections with Internet of Things (IOT) devices and between contractors and owners.
Top Owner Construction Management Software with Support for Connected Construction
- e-Builder Enterprise
Top Contractor Construction Management Software with Support for Connected Construction
- Trimble ProjectSight
- Autodesk Construction Cloud
4) Long Term Financial Outlook & Customer Stewardship
How technology vendors partner with their clients should be as important as that super cool feature you are looking for in your construction project management software. It has been said that the construction industry loves many things but one thing it does not like are surprises. Construction companies and specifically contractors are a generational business. They have been built through the hard work and dedication of the founders and the generations that have come after them. Too often, technology vendors don’t share that same long view of their business. Technology moves too fast to be a generational business and sometimes, that can drive tech firms to surprise their customers with their short term view and accompanying policies.
Tech companies that struggle with demonstrating profitability to their shareholders are likely to catch their customers off guard with surprise tactics such as substantial price increases, sometimes as much as 300% year over year. The reason behind this is that as a tech company rapidly grows and increases its market share, they can sometimes do so at the expense of profitable growth. It’s very similar to a contractor’s motivation to bid many projects at a negative margin. Sure, you will be busy but at some point, you will have to do something to cover expenses.
When looking at top alternatives to Procore, it is vital that you inspect the financial stability of your future technology partner. You will likely be entering into a multi-year relationship with them and it is important that they continue to support you without surprise price increases. Every technology firm will have modest price increases, that is unavoidable but price increases that double over a short period of time is not typical and there are alternative technologies that are just as good without the downside of margin elimination.
Action: Ask for and review publicly available information as to the financial health of your technology partner. Search Google for documentation on Earnings Per Share and ask companies how they will improve their EPS if negative. If they can’t answer the question, consider the risk you may be taking.
Top Owner Construction Management Software with Profitable Growth
- e-Builder Enterprise
- Oracle Primavera Unifier
Top Contractor Construction Management Software with Profitable Growth
- Trimble ProjectSight
- Viewpoint One
- Autodesk BIM 360
5) Pricing For Today’s Construction Economy
COVID-19 changed everything. Prior to a global pandemic, the construction economy worldwide had benefited from a long “bull-market” run of growth and stability. For contractors, owners and design firms, the market expansion took the form of ambitious projects and rapid adoption of technology to expedite project delivery. Technology firms responded to growing demands on productivity improvements and a renaissance of new capabilities hit the market.
However, some technology firms chose to push the upper limit of pricing for these new tools by taking a slice of the growing profit margin of contractors. With an abundance of construction projects and “introductory” pricing offered by technology vendors, the construction industry barely blinked as they consumed more software subscriptions. However, as contractor profitability erodes amidst COVID-19 impact and a slowing of the construction economy, what was once a 2.8% to 3.2% project profitability margin is now facing downward pressure.
Amidst this pressure, it is hard to argue for sending 0.5% to 1.0% profitability margin to a tech vendor in exchange for the use of construction project management software. When considering a competitor to Procore, buyers of construction technology should consider core capabilities they actually need versus the price trade-off for all the bells and whistles you can live without. Prioritize your needs such as budget and cost management, document management, and field management and look for solutions that fulfill those needs at 35% less than the leading solution.
Action: Before you renew your subscription, stop and ask yourself what you need and are using today. Prioritize your must-have capabilities and then begin your search. As you speak with vendors, insist on saving costs compared to leading competitors. Chances are you will be able to.
Top Contractor Construction Management Software that are affordably priced
- Trimble ProjectSight
- Viewpoint One
- CoConstruct
- Jonas Premier
- eSUB
- Fieldwire
