Tailored to the Needs of General Construction

The world of general construction (commercial and residential) is a complex one with many moving parts and lots of accountability. In your financial world, you may face uneven cash flow and thin profit margins, juggle supply contracts, deal with expenses for liability insurance, and post surety bonds. Plus you’re required to comply with numerous federal, state, and local building codes, safety and environmental regulations, and hiring practices.

If you perform commercial, industrial, or institutional work, then you know it’s critical to properly bid work and efficiently manage project plans, labor, equipment, and construction materials. Perhaps you own equipment and retain full-time crews. Or maybe you typically lease equipment for a particular project and hire much of your labor on a project basis. Whatever your approach to accomplishing the work, best practices demand that you have the right tools to ensure proposal accuracy and manage project performance-to-plan, including planned labor, time, and budget.

Much of that holds true for residential builders too, whether specializing in single family homes or multifamily buildings (apartments and condos), or focusing on remodeling work. Often your building process involves land acquisition; land development (roads, sewers, utilities); permit acquisition ("entitlement"); construction; and marketing and sales. That’s often a long road with lots of turns and much accountability. And the actual construction component can be complex – consisting of foundation work, framing, and build-out, which requires a significant amount (and expense) for building materials and likely involves subcontractors to perform specialized work.

That’s why your General Construction business could benefit from industry-specific software that can help improve your overall project performance, including your bidding process, your labor and material allocation, the way your team communicates and collaborates (whether in office or at the job site), and managing changes for maximum profitability.

To be successful in business, you must:

• Efficiently create estimates and proposals, as well as tracking the probability of future jobs
• Schedule time and workforce for projects and track important project documents, including contracts, RFIs, transmittals, subcontracts, and change orders
• Control job costs and accounting data, streamline data entry, and have real-time reporting
• Manage complex Human Resources, including Payroll, Workers' Compensation, Union, Certified Payroll, EEOC, and more
• Easily create purchase orders from bids, track receipt of materials, and properly track subcontracts
• Track equipment usage and maintenance costs for an entire fleet of equipment to minimize downtime and repair costs

To help you accomplish all that and much more, Maxwell Systems offers construction management software solutions that address the critical issues that impact managing a general construction business:

• Takeoff, Estimating, and Proposal Management [+]
  • Choose from digital and digitized takeoff for unbeatable precision and speed
  • Efficiently figure out what the materials, equipment, and labor will cost you and estimate quickly and accurately
  • 3-D Visual Assemblies are valuable tools for fast takeoff and verification
  • Proposals are easily created from a bid and tracked by estimator, lead source, client, and so forth
  • Attach pertinent documents for future reference, such as subcontractors' proposals, customer requests, and Outlook e-mails
  • Automatically create project records, job budgets and change orders in accounting with data from the original bid file
• Project Management [+]
  • Easily track to-date job costs against budgeted costs, including committed costs of subcontractors and material purchases
  • Efficiently create and track important documents such as transmittals, RFIs, subcontracts, and change orders
  • Tools help you drive timely approvals, capitalize on opportunities for every job, and save money on potentially costly mistakes.
  • Alerts indicate when items are overdue and require attention
  • Quantity tracking and unitary billing are incorporated within project management
  • Create subcontract documents and track items including commitment of pricing, scope of work, terms and conditions, and more
  • Efficiently and accurately track lien notices and releases and waivers for your vendors and customers
  • Access up-to-date information and reports whether in the office or in the field, so project managers can conveniently track progress of projects and be more agile
• Financial Management [+]
  • Accounts receivable and payable are specifically tailored for contractors, including retention and discount capabilities
  • Accounts Payable, General Ledger, Project Costing, Payroll, and Purchase Orders in a seamless system ensures that commitments and payments are processed efficiently and accurately
  • Specific construction billing formats include T&M, AIA, Progress, Cost Plus, Retention Only, and more
  • WIP and Bonding reports are automatically created, whether you are on a work-in-progress or direct cost accounting basis
  • Historical detail is maintained, allowing peace of mind with data integrity and reliable audit trails
  • Owners and accounting staff can easily access real-time financial information and drill-down to the detailed transaction level
• Employee Management [+]
  • Comprehensive software provides everything needed to process and report construction payroll
  • Efficiently handle Davis-Bacon Certified payroll reporting, union, workers' compensation, and benefit tracking for merit shop
  • Easily enter timecard information and track labor burden, over-time rules, paid time off, additional pay and deductions, and employee/employer 401K
  • Reporting includes quarterly and annual state reporting; and Federal forms include W-2, W-3, 940, 941, and EEO-1
  • Scan important documents such as I-9 verifications, drug tests, and certificates of completion and electronically file in the software
• Procurement and Materials Buy-out Management [+]
  • Create purchase orders for any project or change order from the estimate
  • Easily track and manage the purchase and receipt of materials to help keep projects on schedule
  • For timely job scheduling, materials can be tracked by job: ordered amount, received amount, outstanding amount, and expected time of arrival
  • On-screen alerts warn when an item added to a PO causes a job budget item to be exceeded
  • Understand true job costs and stop overspending, with price validation and verification of charges against vendor invoices and committed cost reporting
• Equipment Management [+]
  • Whether it is a fleet of equipment or just a few critical pieces, software efficiently tracks equipment usage as costs, so you can bill to each project appropriately for optimal profitability
  • Define and track maintenance procedures for each piece of equipment
  • Detailed reporting keeps track of how much a piece of equipment is earning versus how much it costs to operate

And because you face unique challenges in technology and communications in the office and in the field, Maxwell Systems solutions help you improve operational efficiencies and share relevant information:

• Seamless takeoff and estimating software that reduces data entry and increases speed and accuracy
• Mobile technology for two-way data transfer between those in the back office and those in the field
• Job cost accounting capabilities that are critical to running construction projects profitably
• Comprehensive reporting features, including key performance indicators, customizable alerts, warranty tracking, and management by exception

With such easy-to-use yet robust software solutions, construction owners can gain full control of their business and insight into each project’s performance and profitability.

Maxwell Systems’ industry-specific construction software solutions are shaped by decades of leadership and innovation, expert professionals with direct experience in the construction industry, and critically valuable feedback from customers. And we continue to demonstrate our commitment to and build our understanding of the general construction industry by: contributing to trade publications as authors and advertisers, serving on association committees, and participating in trade shows including Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) EdCon & Expo, Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA) Annual Conference & Exhibition, Pacific Coast Builders Conference (PCBC), Associated General Contractors (AGC) Annual Convention, and International Builders’ Show.