With the new Smart Feature tool, is there the ability to make, modify, export, and import new report templates? Some things I would like to work on is trying to find a way to import a conformed table from Bid2Win that holds the specific material names, thicknesses/areas, and material costs, and afterwards be able to export a final takeoff report that mirrors the information. Or at least to reduce the back and forth between excel, TBC, and B2W.
My goal is that this gives me the final costing and material quantities that can either be quickly fed back into Bid2Win or outright imported back into the other system and carry over any missing data into our bid. I would hope to at least be able to organize how the tables feed back the information for the final report.
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Nicholas
Our thinking here is that we will build dedicated tabs in the report for Estimating Software products like B2W and HCSS and InEight that has the data structured the way that you need it directly.
All we need to know is what data fields are required and what order you want them in and how best to use the Attributes of Features eg to put in Pay Item codes or any other codes that may be needed for the match up. We would.like to use a specific set of universal names for the attributes needed so that anyone using B2W can set those up the same way (not the codes themselves as those will likely be unique to the client (DOT, Private Client, Municipality etc) or the contractors internal coding system, but I am assuming that B2W is setup a certain way and that we will match up the codes needed.
I am not sure if the coding is at the Feature level or at the material layer level ie a Sidewalk may be the pay item but maybe that has a subgrade compaction sub item along with an aggregate and concrete sub pay item that is also required.
I know this is highly variable from client to client and from contractor to contractor so not sure how consistent we can make this.
I am keen to do something here if you can help me define what is required or give me an example of what you would like to see in a B2W tab of our report.
I assume we will base this off our consolidated report that you may not have seen yet (the final one will be released this month, but it brings together Stripping, Replacement, aoverex Demolition, Subgrades and Earthworks and Earthworks can be separated out into eg Soil and Rock etc. Based on Strata.
I am not sure if you just lump all the same features together into a single bid item eg if you have 50 house pads, 20 sidewalks etc. Or whether you report those as one collected item.
If you can advise or if others want to contribute here I am happy to get all input.
First step is to get all the data you need together and then look at automated upload into B2W as a follow on.
Alan
Hi Alan,
Let’s wait and see what your new command entails before really digging into it. I am mostly just wondering if we are able to make our own templates for Smart Feature or what we got is what we got and we may need to just slightly tweek what we get out of RPS to match our needs or whatever organization structures our companies or project owners may have.
However, in an ideal world it would be amazing for not just B2W, but for other softwares, to have the ability to sync costing information to our TBC reports or for B2W to sync with our drawings in TBC and read the information gathered and perhaps organize all the areas, lengths, and volumes according to their feature and apply those values to whichever field of the bid we are trying to specify. This may go as far as in bid to win having a plugin that says import all X feature values into the Y assigned area of the bid. But at that point its less of a TBC plugin and more of a B2W one at that point. So maybe having a plugin that analyzes a particular bid from one of these softwares and applies the cost value applied to whatever feature matches the cost description (ie: earthfill, gavel type1, gravel type 2, ect.) so that as long as we keep naming conventions concise between the 2, we will be able to mitigate the back and forth and make the chances of mis-keying information or having other human errors occur in the bidding process.
Hi Alan,
I can’t wait for the Consolidated Report and Earthworks component to report Strata Volumes - I’ve just spent over a week extracting these numbers - something a bit mopre automated would be a game changer for me!
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