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P. Flanigan & Sons is one of Baltimore’s oldest and best known contracting companies. This $70-80 million business has been providing road construction and other heavy general contractor services since 1885, including surfacing roads, airfields, manufacturing facilities, malls—even local landmarks such as the Baltimore Raven’s practice field and Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

Recently, P. Flanigan & Sons was recognized for the level of quality associated with their work as the winner of the 2007 Sheldon G. Hayes award. This award, determined though a two year process by the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA), honors high quality construction practices which result in smooth, safe and durable pavements. P. Flanigan & Sons received the award in recognition of their work on a 16.8 mile stretch of 1-97 between Baltimore and Annapolis.

There are few firms in the construction industry with the same level of experience and longevity as P. Flanigan & Sons, and there is good reason for their success. The company combines a background of strong project management with an aggressive pursuit of cutting edge construction methods—which includes using the latest and greatest technology.

In pursuit of the latest and greatest technology, P. Flanigan & Sons decided to abandon their spreadsheets—and the high potential for errors that came with them—and invest in a solution to standardize their estimating and bidding.

“We actually purchased and installed one of the competitor’s products” recalls Kevin Mullen, vice president of estimating. “I went to a training class and tried to develop a couple of cost estimates, and I really didn’t like it. It was an old DOS-based application where you had to use your keyboard to drill in to the information, then use the escape key to back out—it just wasn’t mouse friendly. We had a 30 day money-back guarantee, and on the 29th day I told them, ‘Come in here and take this out, I can’t use it.’”

Continuing his search for a user friendly solution, Mullen decided to evaluate BID2WIN Estimating and Bidding—a brand new product built from the ground up with the latest Microsoft technology and development standards.

“We did an online demonstration with BID2WIN Software and they showed us screen shots and mock-ups of what the product was going to look like” says Mullen. “BID2WIN fulfilled our vision, and then some. One of the best features of BID2WIN is the ease of use, and you’ve probably heard that over and over again. The way that the interface is laid out makes it so easy to navigate from one place in a bid to an entirely different place with just a few mouse clicks. That is a big part of what sold us, and we invested in BID2WIN before it was even really a marketable product.”

The investment turned out to be a good decision, because today—over ten years later—P. Flanigan & Sons continues to reap the rewards of an easy to use, standardized estimating and bidding solution. “BID2WIN has allowed us to expand the number of jobs we bid, while still basically working with the same number of people that we had 15 years ago when I started with the company. We’re coming off a series of record-setting years as far as sales, and of course a lot of that is owed to BID2WIN and our ability to have intelligent estimates and well thought out bids.”

“BID2WIN has made P. Flanigan & Sons a better business” Mullen continues. “We have a better handle on the costs that it takes to run our business because we can do a lot of cross-reporting. It’s easy enough to bid a job, but then you also have to try to run the business and recover all the other costs that are associated with it, beyond the direct costs of construction. With BID2WIN and the detail that we can extract from the estimates, we always know where we are.”

After a decade of success with BID2WIN Software’s products and services, it’s not surprising that P. Flanigan & Sons was one of the first companies to purchase BID2WIN Software’s latest construction management solution—BUILD2WIN Field Tracking.

“As a web-based application, BUILD2WIN takes advantage of the latest technology, and the younger workforce is expecting this kind of tool to report their daily work and keep track of their production. We need to deliver that to the people who are the future of our company, so that they don’t get frustrated in having to do things the same way that things were done 30 years ago” explains Mullen. “The other advantage is that we will have real-time results, rather than waiting four to six weeks after the work has taken place in the field. We will have analysis available immediately—we can address problems faster and that will translate into better profits.”

Mullen continues, “It never ceases to amaze me that I can sit in the lobby of a hotel in San Diego, California, wirelessly log in on my laptop to our servers in Baltimore, review a bid in real time, and be on the cell phone with a person who is sitting at their desk—and they can see the changes that I’m making from 3,000 miles away. It’s just incredible.”

In fact, Mullen likes BID2WIN Software so much that he wouldn’t mind joining the company!

“If I wasn’t in the construction business, BID2WIN Software would be a place I would want to work. The people who work there are visionaries—they stay on the edge of technology, out ahead of the curve and their competition. I mean, I’m not a computer person” admits Mullen, “But it seems to me that they’re always pushing the envelope in their field, leveraging the latest programming language or new environment to make everything work better. The support team is by and large the best we’ve ever dealt with. BID2WIN Software is on the ball, and they are a pleasure to partner with. That’s why we’ve been with them for over ten years now.”

To learn more about P. Flanigan & Sons, Inc. visit www.pflanigan.com

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