As the largest public university in the state, Utah Valley University currently offers nearly 34,000 students degrees across 100 subjects ““ including construction management. As part of the educational experience, the university regularly competes in awards competitions ““ allowing students to combine what they’ve learned in the classroom with real-world construction projects. Designed to help students prepare for future careers in construction, these events are sponsored by a wide array of leaders in the market place.
“Our university’s mandate is to arm students with the tools required to excel in the construction market. Part of this process is to expose them to a wide range of scenarios ““ so they better understand what it takes to succeed,” said Eric Linfield, UVU Department Chair, Construction Technologies. “This is why we place a high level of importance on providing students with the best technology possible.”
The Challenge
The Associated Schools of Construction (ASC) competition is regarded as a must attend, problem-solving event needed for a degree in the construction field, as industry leaders offer active projects for students to solve. In the past, the university encountered challenges effectively solving the tasks at hand, because students lacked effective tools to estimate and bid on specific projects. To compete, students took on the complex process of combining loosely integrated tools, including Excel, to “guestimate” project costs. This limited visibility offered no view into the bigger picture of project goals and thus hampered their ability to advance past the preliminary competitions.
“Our students had the skills, but just couldn’t unify and coordinate the estimating and bidding data accurately, the missing piece was critical project insight,” noted Ed Kluber, Faculty Advisor and Adjunct Professor at UVU.
Although the university’s students had the talent and skills to perform well, they lacked the real-world construction management tools needed to make it past the preliminary round and into the regionals. Having used B2W with work done for his own employer, Kluber saw the B2W Educate Program and B2W Estimate as a solution to his students’ performance dilemma.
The Solution
The university became the newest member of the B2W Educate Program to receive the award-winning, construction estimating software free-of-charge.
“The number of high schools and universities who actively offer construction programs are rapidly increasing,” said Paul McKeon, CEO of B2W Software. “However, many of these schools and universities don’t have access to the most current software programs used in the field to simplify and optimize the construction estimation process. That’s why we created the B2W Educate Program, to partner with and help universities such as UVU.”
Intuitive and easy-to-use, B2W Estimate brings all relative project data into one place for accurate cost, equipment and employee analysis as well as offering scheduling and budget adherence information. The software is a core piece of B2W’s ONE (Operational Networked Elements) Platform, the first suite of construction management software that empowers everyone from office managers to foremen in the field, with direct insight into the entire construction process.
Advancing to the regionals meant the students needed to overcome their prior issues associated with managing hundreds of pieces of equipment, analyzing man hours, accurately determining costs, and coordinating with supervisors. Kluber knew it was time to divert from past Excel-based tactics and interject the best-practice software in use by the most successful construction companies.
“For past preliminary competitions, we tried numerous technology tools, but none met our complex needs, most were no more than glorified spreadsheets and nothing got us to the regionals,” said Kluber. “I knew that B2W Estimate could take us to the next level-giving the students the competitive edge necessary to achieve success.”
The Results
Using the company’s B2W Estimate software, students achieved top placement in the CM Challenge preliminary construction project competition for the first time in the university’s history.
“In the past, we had a separate page for every line item we needed to track,” said student leader, Tommy Brittain. “Using B2W Estimate, we streamlined the whole process with better organization, data entry and tracking as well as produced more granular reports on equipment, employees and cost analysis. By enhancing our project estimating abilities with B2W, we were able to impress the competition’s judges beyond any past performance.”
Leveraging this new-found confidence, students then entered the ASC Regions 6 and 7 regional event, where they competed against 20 other schools and were observed by 200 attending sponsor companies. Judges noted the students for their high level of organization, knowledge and analysis of production, crews, and subcontractors. As a result of their B2W Estimate-enhanced presentation, the students achieved fourth place in the regionals and two students were offered positions from competition sponsors.
“I saw a huge jump in the students’ confidence from the competition’s beginning to its end, and I attribute this to B2W Estimate’s ability to help them organize the many project requirements. Our new B2W partnership gave the students a real-world construction management tool to properly showcase their talent and achieve notable placement in the ASC Regions 6 and 7,” concluded Kluber.
“B2W truly takes the estimating process to the next level and was really the turning point in helping our students advance,” Eric Linfield added.
About B2W Software
Headquartered in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, B2W Software (fka BID2WIN Software™) is a premier provider of enterprise-class construction software, services and solutions that is redefining the future for streamlined operations. Powered by our unique ONE platform, B2W solutions effectively leverage the latest technologies into a unified system for estimating and bidding, field tracking and analysis, resource planning and dispatching, equipment maintenance.
