Download in PDF format (470 KB)

C.S. McCrossan Inc., a diversified heavy highway contractor with locations in New Mexico, Arizona and Minnesota, performs over one hundred million dollars in airport, structural and heavy highway work every year. With a workload of this volume, it is no surprise that C.S. McCrossan has a large number of estimators. Before purchasing BID2WIN Estimating & Bidding in 1999, C.S. McCrossan was using spreadsheets for estimating and bidding, and a lot of estimators were doing bids by hand. The company knew that a standardized system was needed to get everyone on the same page.

In comparing software packages, C.S. McCrossan was looking for the most user-friendly solution available. “We looked at BID2WIN and HCSS,” explains project manager and estimator Stuart Krummen. “BID2WIN was very easy to use, very intuitive—much more so than the other software packages on the market.”

C.S. McCrossan decided that BID2WIN was the right solution for their company, and soon had all of their estimators bidding more efficiently. “Taking advantage of task templates and bid items has cut down our estimating time significantly,” explains Krummen. “All of our estimators approach bids in a similar and standardized fashion, which has made us more efficient and productive.”

Plus, the company saves valuable time by interfacing BID2WIN with their accounting system, Maxwell StreetSmarts. “The time we spend coding our cost accounts in BID2WIN ensures that the job total remains constant as we create code tasks and drag-and-drop estimated costs from the bid,” says structures division manager Randall Reiner.

But the company’s biggest return on their investment has been in the increased accuracy of their bids. “BID2WIN has virtually eliminated mistakes, and the control over markups based upon work categories has provided a safety net for analyzing and dealing with risk,” Reiner explains. “Our investment in the software has definitely paid off.”

In fact, C.S. McCrossan was so pleased with their investment that when the time came to evaluate field tracking solutions, the company knew that BID2WIN Software was the provider to go to. The company had previously used StreetSmarts reports, printed and filled out by project managers, with paper time cards to manage their field tracking needs. This process had its share of problems, from the risk of costly errors to the lack of timely data reported.

C.S. McCrossan purchased BUILD2WIN Field Tracking in 2008, and has already seen a return on their investment. “We’re seeing a 2% improvement in our labor costs since we have started managing our reporting on a daily basis,” says Reiner. “This is a big number when your labor costs are in the millions of dollars.”

 “BUILD2WIN version 1.3 created efficiencies that allow us to enter our actual labor and production quantities on a daily basis. Having this information daily allows us to make management decisions in a much timelier manner than our previous weekly data summaries allowed.”

C.S. McCrossan keeps their staff up to date with new product releases by sending them to BID2WIN Software’s annual User Conferences. In fact, C.S. McCrossan has attended every User Conference to date—giving their estimators and field personnel the opportunity to learn new product features, get one-on-one assistance from the BID2WIN Software staff and give feedback for future developments.

“When you go to a User Conference, you can tell that the trainers are familiar with construction,” explains Reiner. “They know the conversion factors from a square yard of asphalt to a ton, and you can tell that they know the bidding process and the software inside and out. They are excellent communicators with a good sense of humor.”

And if any questions arise between conferences, C.S. McCrossan knows that they can count on BID2WIN Software’s renown 24/365 support services to be there for them. “BID2WIN Software’s technical support has been more than helpful—they’ve actually been available twenty-four hours a day, and we’ve needed that at times,” says Krummen, who recalls having difficulty with a bid after-hours one night.

“We called BID2WIN Software technical support; it must have been two in the morning East Coast time, and they actually told us to send the estimate over to them. We e-mailed it to them, and within a half hour, they had sent it back and the problem was resolved. We were read ‘low’ the next morning.”

To learn more about C.S. McCrossan Inc., visit www.mccrossan.com.

Back to Case Studies