Success Stories
Nixco Plumbing
Providing a full range of plumbing services for residential and commercial, including new construction, remodeling, and excavation work, Nixco Plumbing relies on technology to help fulfill its philosophy to “work hard and get it done right.”
Founded in 1978, Nixco is now a $7 million company with more than 40 employees serving the greater Cincinnati and southern Dayton, Ohio area. To achieve that growth and deliver quality service, Nixco needed to operate with speed and accuracy throughout its takeoff and estimating processes. That’s why the contractor has been using Maxwell Systems™ Estimation® software for nearly two decades. A seamless solution for takeoff, estimating, and bidding, Estimation is uniquely tailored to the needs of plumbing contractors and helps them increase their speed and accuracy.
Challenges
With more sophisticated technology, Nixco has seen an increase in demand and shorter timeframes to complete work. The company needed to work quickly and accurately to bid more jobs and remain competitive. To achieve growth and deliver quality service, Nixco realized an investment in technology would help them operate with speed and accuracy throughout its takeoff and estimating processes.
Solution
Nixco Plumbing uses Maxwell Systems Estimation, a seamless solution for takeoff, estimating, and bidding. Uniquely tailored to the needs of plumbing contractors, the solution helps the company’s estimators perform precise takeoffs, create detailed estimates, and bid more jobs easily.
Results
In addition to improving speed and accuracy throughout estimating processes, Nixco Plumbing’s estimators can also handle frequent changes to pricing with the most up-to-date data at their fingertips to create an accurate bid. Nixco can also better handle procurement and materials management using Estimation, which helps them be more productive and lower processing costs.
Jeff Heger is President of Nixco Plumbing and has seen significant changes in the market and in management processes since assuming the company’s helm from his father in 2001. “With more sophisticated technology, we have seen an increase in demand as well as shorter timeframes to complete the work,” explained Heger. “Everything must be done quicker and more accurately than in the past in order to remain competitive and we must bid more jobs these days to stay in the game.”
Estimation is Nixco Plumbing’s easy-to-use solution for relevant, timely, and accurate information during the takeoff and estimating process, as well as a tool to gain valuable insights to improve business operations.
Automating Takeoff & Estimating
Although its projects range in size and type, the average project Nixco works is between $10,000 and $20,000. When bidding on a job, an estimator typically downloads the electronic plans, prints them off on their plotter, and uses a digitizer board to perform the takeoff. When calculating the lengths, areas, and quantities of count items with Estimation, the Nixco estimators simply lay their plans on the digitizer board, set the scale, then takeoff the plans with a stylus pen. After the measurements are completed, they can easily send them to the estimate and prepare the bid.
For those times they are working in the field, Nixco Plumbing uses a rollup digitizer to conveniently perform a takeoff of plans while at the job site.
After the takeoff is complete, Nixco uses Estimation’s centralized pricing database for historical pricing on cost items to easily determine what the materials, labor, etc. will cost. With prices changing so frequently, the estimators are able to make sure they have the most up-to-date data at their fingertips to create an accurate bid.
Easily Manage Materials & Procurement
Nixco also uses Estimation to handle their procurement process. The software’s materials management capability helps the contractor streamline procurement with features to instantly access their entire purchasing history, efficiently produce and track purchase orders and requisitions, manage materials and back orders, and export prices and cost data to the other systems. Plus Estimation can seamlessly integrate their purchasing information with their estimating and accounting functions, helping contractors be more productive and lower processing costs.
“Having 12 years of historical data in our system is awesome. We know exactly what we have purchased, when, for whom, and how much it cost,” explained Heger. “We can review past purchases to help us make better decisions as we prepare bids more quickly and accurately for future jobs.”
Saving Time and Gaining Confidence
“The Maxwell Systems Estimation solution is much faster than doing a takeoff and estimate by hand. We are able to develop an estimate in just a couple hours for a $20,000 project. If we did it manually, it would take a full day and we would be less confident in our numbers as we might not takeoff everything that we needed to for the job. Estimation allows us to bid more jobs, which is essential in today’s market.”
Heger also explained how Estimation saves the purchasing department significant time. “We can simply cut and paste information, import from Estimates or create Purchase Order Templates, and no longer have to write out every line item in our purchase orders. If we had to do it by hand it would take two to three times longer.”
“It is amazing how accurate Estimation is,” Heger added. “We are able to fine-tune our pricing, which is essential to making sure we do not bid too high and lose jobs or bid too low and lose money on jobs. It is still a competitive market, so speed and accuracy are necessary. Estimation has really made our life easier.”
