[Webinar Recording] Take Your Electrical Estimating Workflows to the Cloud with Accubid Anywhere

In this webinar collaboration with Electrical Contractor Magazine, learn how you can optimize your estimating, wherever you are with Trimble Accubid Anywhere. This fully hosted solution allows estimators to collaborate from anywhere.

Webinar Transcription:

Good day, everyone, welcome to today's presentation, take your electrical estimating workflows to the cloud with occupied anywhere with Trimble. My name is Colleen Beatty and I'm the senior editor here at Electrical Contractor magazine on behalf of Electrical Contractor magazine, I want to thank all of you for attending today's presentation. Now, before we get started, I just want to go over some housekeeping items really quickly.

So first, please note that today's presentation is being recorded and we'll be providing you with a link to the recording after the webinar is over. So if you missed anything or if you have to leave early, you can come back any time and watch the recording when it works for you. The audio for today's presentation should be coming through your computer speakers or headphones. If you have any technical difficulties, audio or otherwise, please reach out using the Q&A window on the right of your screen.

And finally, we, of course, encourage your participation in today's webinar. So please send us your questions. You can submit them at any time during the presentation using the Q&A module on the right, on your screen, on the right of your screen. And we'll have time at the end of the webinar for Q&A to answer them. Now, with all of that, all of that out of the way, I'd like to give a warm welcome to today's speaker, Robin Reinhard, electrical estimating sales manager for Trimble, NPR's Eastern Region with more than thirty six years of experience in electrical contracting industry.

Robin has served as a helper journeyman electrical estimator project manager and vice president. Robin joined Trimble 24 years ago and resides in eastern Tennessee. Welcome, Robin. Well, thank you, I appreciate that, Colleen, and I think you see magazine the. But disinviting giving us the opportunity to communicate with our team here, as well as your clients thanking everybody. I'm a go over the Acumen Anywhere platform with us today. I'm going to cover this agenda, but we'll be introducing the product platform.

We'll be discussing the business problems of the on premise software, as well as discussing why modern software companies are moving away from this type of software delivery. What is Trimble activity anywhere and how does it address these pain points in our business? I'll be doing a high fly over feature demo. Now, this is not a full product demo. And, of course, you can achieve a full product demo by reaching out to Trimble's and get connected with one of your sales reps.

But this will at least give you a feel for the features and functions that elevate this platform over what is currently being offered in the market space. We'll follow up at the end, as Colleen said, with some questions answered, so please, as you have those questions, feel free to reach out with that and we will get to as many of those as we can. We will follow up with answers to the others as well and provide more information following this as well.

So Colleen did a great job of introducing me, so I'm going to just kind of skip over that slide. There's not much more to tell you about other than I've been around this platform for a lot of years. And I can honestly tell you that this product excites me very well. It it drives what I do today with this little in this strange world that we live in currently. I have the fortune of having my wife walk over my shoulder and working out of our home here.

And one of the things you notice, she that she must be very excited about that product, because I know your voice goes up, you start talking very fast and you get very excited. So I'll try to keep that in mind today and slow down, make sure they understand everything I'm trying to try to. Little introduction about Trimble for those that don't understand, Trimble acquired ackee and. About 11 years ago, platform of has been out in the marketplace for over 30 years, and Trimble's brought quite a bit of development for us.

We are working as a complete provider of solutions, tying this solution that we're going to talk about today into other solutions that Trimble is providing. One of the things that I think you're going to see in the near future is the ability for an installer to present on the project, put on a hard hat that will have a Holman's built into it. They'll be able to see all the material that's needed for the particular task that they're given to go to that particular work area, step into that room and have this software project Modlin right in front of them a little bit be able to install as they're seeing the installation that it's already been completed.

It's going to help us obviously grow a large productivity, eliminate errors and issues, those type of things. So this is just one step towards that direction. The. Now. The challenges the electrical contractors are encountering in this year is beyond anything we've seen before. Obviously, a lot of remote working has gone into place, having connectivity to their offices and sharing information needed to be able to access any time. Cash flow is obviously a concern at any year, but especially in unseen conditions and uncertain times that we're in.

These are the elements that we're going to be speaking about today, trying to help you ascertain these issues as well as help you provide a solution to these issues. Now. The challenge of on premise software, on premise software keeps us limited to accessibility. It's not as mobile as we'd like to have in this day and age. It limits our ability to collaborate, which is one of the biggest elements of cost that we all know. If anything, I can ask any contractor if you could put your thumb on one topic that you feel is the most costly topic to your business and your profitability.

It's going to be lack of communication and collaboration. So it also puts a high demand on IP resources, the cost of the hardware and. It provides an uncertainty of how well that information is going to be readily available to us when we're at the time of need. Now, that's where the opportunity of cloud based software comes into play. First I want to say. To start by talking about what Microsoft has, your definition of cloud computing is you see this here on the screen.

What I want to point your attention to is the last half of this where faster innovation, flexible resources, economic economies of scale and the result of lower operating cost efficiency and scalability, nothing could be more scalable than an investment that can grow with you or you can proceed with you in times of need time to them. And so this is the platform that we are providing with Jacobin anywhere. The benefits of the cloud. The stated aim is to reduce costs, I'll cover more of this on the next slide, but 

increasing scalability, better collaboration and remote access usually available on some troops and eliminating large upfront infrastructure investments.

Software provider manages the disaster recovery plans. Software backups and hardware and software updates all but eliminating your IP need. Now through this. You're going to see here the differences in this simple listing of requirements, an on premise platform requires the sense of interface devices, software licensing, Internet. Now, those three are common between the two, but that's really where it stops. Initial software costs, server hardware costs, even the infrastructure and facility to store the servers anymore.

In this mobile type of environment that we're finding ourselves in are no longer needed. So how does this directly relate, just estimating accessing collaborate on estimates for office and job site and not just get smart and out, but what happens after that estimate has committed us to a contract? How do we use that information to help elevate the other processes in our business by accessing the same items and assemblies and project information simultaneously among our team members. One single source of truth, all teams working off of the same drawings, if the drawing shows that take off and that that off is coordinated to our budget and I don't have a line, it's all factual.

Of course, backup and software and pricing updates as well, to keep us current, not only in our pricing of our estimates of risk, but as well as our change orders and buying sell value out of a change order. So your focus, obviously, is on your core business. You didn't get into this business, I don't think any of us that started off with our tools and grew into electrical contractors owning our own businesses ever really planned on being I.T. professionals.

So we handled that ourselves. We hired out. We bring other overhead in to manage that type of thing. And that's something that you can depend now on anywhere platform to provide for you. So we're going to move on into the actual product. Now. This is pretty much stating what we've stated up to this point, but the amount of money that you can save by eliminating the IT cost is something that we've tried very hard to try to come with some kind of ROIC generator that would help clients see a fixed value of what that is.

But quite frankly, it's so conditional to individual clients and individual ups the clients might have had. But if you do take a hard look at that, you're going to often find that the reduction of the costs is going to more than pay for the investment in software. So it's almost like moving from this day forward. I don't have that type of software costs that have been accumulating over the years up to this point to be successful. One subscription covers it all so literally includes not just an e-mail solution, which is our estimating product, but our graphic will take our solution, which directly connects graphical drawings to the estimate and also our change management solution.

What happens after we get that is something we're moving forward with. Our contract labor manufacturer and vendor pricing is included not just the vendor pricing that would be managed by using a discount off of the national average that's most commonly used today, but also used in the spirt exchange, which allows me to directly connect my local suppliers that I purchased and have direct pricing reflected into my costs and my bills. Some middle managers. Well, those of you that use this platform understand the benefits of how this brings that process of putting submittals together, especially electronics middle's speeds.

That process helps us manage that throughout the product acceptance process that is also provided with a solution. And one point that isn't top of the we talked about in a lot of our fliers and on our website, but as a user, I can appreciate that Trimble is giving me a platform that allows me to put other information into so I can put an unlimited amount of clubs posted for storage by project within the solution. And once again, a very nice savings, as well as helping me get that collaboration I'm looking for.

Now, the minimum upfront costs with this platform, you're literally just paying for the service, you're paying to access the service, you're not having a deep investment of purchasing this platform like you went on on premise, having that deep investment. This allows me to amortize this investment over time, gives me a better cash flow and, of course, scalability throughout the year as I add users and adding them to the solution. I'm not making another deep investment that once again might grow stagnant next year if I'm not having as many users needing to use the process.

Campbell takes care of 100 percent of the infrastructure costs, so this is placed on Microsoft as your network. With that, we host a private site. For your information, you are the owners of that data. We don't access that information at all. We can access your users as far as how many people are using the platform, how often they use it. We can provide analytics like that back to yourself so you can make those investment just notes as you go throughout the year.

So these elements of having to have additional software licensing from Microsoft operating systems, those things you simply need on your side, that Windows based hardware platform. An Internet connection. And accessibility to the platform. Our team of skilled professionals monitored the health of the environment. We monitor performances 24/7, we monitor security and the data integrity. That's not just something that we do on the solution to provide that stability, but we also do this monitoring so that we can put your information in a safe environment and can make sure that you can always access and information.

No, that what natural disasters or elements of concern that might encroach upon the software. We do all our continuous updates. This platform does provide a much smoother method of pushing updates out to our clients. We're able to push these smaller updates more frequently throughout the year rather than building these up, testing them for on premise environments, and then releasing one big update every year where you, your users have a lot more to learn, a lot more to get acclimated.

We also can provide solutions to these steps, providing manager videos and links, that type of information so that users can pick up these new tools very, very quickly and they're not weighted down by that learning curve. Like I said, you would have an on premise software. A little bit about security, we do use the transport layer security system protocol. Now, I just said a lot of words that even I personally don't understand, but I am being told by our development team with the highest level of security that's offered in the Internet and that connectivity.

So your information stays secure. All your debt is not simply to you, and as I stated before, that does security and integrity follows the latest industry standards and we make sure that. In an event of desperate disaster recovery, Microsoft Azure takes up a lot of this load for us. They constantly monitor if there's issues of hurricanes, these things that are coming into the area, they automatically make a data transfer to other sites so that our clients that are affected by those types of things and simply get to an Internet connection, they'll find their data in that data center, even if that data center was completely destroyed, that their local connections, they do all the data is redundantly backed up.

So there is no loss of that connectivity, how we handle it within ourselves and our software. We do a backup for backup within the system weekly. There's a differential backup that's done every 12 hours. And as you're using it as a user, there's a transactional log backup every five to 10 minutes. In the event of an unexpected regional outage, services can be migrated, like I said, within the hour. Even if it was something that we couldn't foresee.

Last, once again, is the flexibility and can't stress how well this works for clients, and I've already seen this in practice, that this investment being used by clients where they have had years, where there's a lot of estimating going on, the work isn't nearly as prevalent as it is that they're estimating an awful lot more than the previous year. And they're successful. They get a lot of work now. They're managing more work than they are estimating.

The solution allows that scalability instead of selling you a platform solely dedicated to something and a separate platform solely dedicated to change management, that access now can provide both. Not only can that be provided simultaneously, but I can have multiple estimates as well as multiple projects, project management pricing available to me and open accessible to me as a lock and user simultaneously. Now we get to the fun part, we're going to talk about some of the product and we're going to go through the demonstration of the platform.

Like I said this morning, getting up close to a full demonstration of film appreciation takes about two hours of these products. But we're going to talk about some high level elements and some points of interest. The exciting advantage is that we're bringing with this platform. To multiuser in a multiple location, support is one of the key elements having no matter what you have at any other locations. There's an Internet connection. I can now be talking life and using information live with other users.

And it's not just within a single project, but it's throughout the platform if I'm collaborating on an estimate with another user. We can simultaneously use drawings, we can simultaneously converse through that, we can you can bring other individuals into those files and share information live so that as we drive our management after the fact, we can have a field superintendent, project manager in the office to different locations. And yet we are collaborating on the same project, drawing live, making decisions that affect our productivity.

This project centric type of estimating is really the kind of key, instead of estimates, the standalone estimating files that are never connected to one another. This is information that's literally being put into one database. So no longer is the database just simple material pricing and labor components, but it's all the project information in that database. It's the third party information, our vendors, our clients, our subcontractors. That information is going to be in here, which is going to give me the ability to go back through this project information and mine it for different information that I might want to pull out from the solution.

I could go back through a series of projects and say, show me here how successful this particular vendor has been with us on day. Show me all the projects that I have particularly estimated and provide pricing. What's my ratio with this particular client that I've been working with over this last year, that type of information, because all of it consists in one database. Having both the and interface interface simultaneously on a project helps us carry that communication. Make those incision moving forward, so, I mean, give me an example of this.

Hang on a second here. James. All right. What you're seeing me here is opening up the platform. This is the first thing that you're going to see when you come into the platform. As I'm looking at this information, I'm seeing the different projects that I'm being able access. These projects, as I select a single project, you're going to see not just the estimates that have been placed into this project, but you're also seeing the change orders that have been placed in this project and have multiple estimates within an estimate of multiple pricing.

Down below here, you're seeing that the change orders that I have submitted into this particular project. So as this information is being centralized, I'm seeing this information live. Here's the change orders. How might these contractors change date as those changes become approved and we're going to come back at the end, towards the end and we're going to look at a couple of takeoff videos showing the change or a breakdown in the method of organization of your communication of change orders.

Now. As I move into this particular. Project, you're going to see the project information that I'm going to have about the project, obviously the Commonwealth formation, but I'm also going to be able to organize this information by type once again, giving me that filtering capability of maybe looking over my history and saying, show me all the school projects that I've done here. You can see a set start date, completion dates. These are values of information that I can look at.

How many days? I mean, weeks, months, maybe a project and use that information as well as I can add vendors that would participate in this particular project. And these vendors are going to grow as I use the solution over the years. And I'm going to have those vendors that I can once again come back and mine that information. And it's a very detailed amount of information we can put in here. I can do all that communication right through the system to these vendors, to these clients, to the subcontractors, to our generals.

Add to this list, obviously, so that you can see that progression of information as well as connect these members to these projects. OK. The files and storage, as I say, is kind of one of the understated values of the solution is that it's unlimited storage. So if there's information that's particular about this project, I can upload that information and I can store that information in here. I can even use the terminal connect solution to help share this information to the outside world, giving my vendors outside, whether it's Web links like this or just files that I've shared and stored within the project and then invite members to access those files and that information.

OK. We're going to talk next about take off that specification of designations. That's one of the elements. That. Allows me to speed the process up. In current estimates, we depend on our estimates to do a lot of this work by getting to know their database and finding these things. I call it the hunt and picking up the database we're going to use take off that's helped speed up that process, have a focus to the particular elements that they're taking off so that they don't have to manage through literally tens of thousands assembling to accomplish a takeoff.

We're going to talk about aspects of the spec and what the attributes and the spec in combination bring to the decision making and helped me get the material pick up. And we're also going to do a couple custom designations like fishing gear takeoff's here. All right. So if you look in this platform, I can use it like I could of traditional estimates of some where they estimate is going to navigate through the database through literally the 80000 plus assemblies that you have here in front of you and go down to a pre-built assembly that's been built specifically for a need.

And they can use that simply in their takeoff and apply in a traditional sense. But I actually call that owning a Ferrari and driving it in first gear. One of the things that this platform brings to the place is to elevate that need to do a takeoff in a traditional sense, where my biggest learning curve is figuring out where these objects are and making sure that the estimate is using. The correct assemblies, so if you look here, I may create a designation.

This designation is something that specific to this project, I'm using it right out of the system so that I can simply bring in this bill material and assembly. I mean, give it a unique name. In this case, I might call it the type a fixture. Some of the information that I can do that can alarm this, that's right now, that's all I know is the label and I'm not a junior Asmir. I don't know what material elements I want my senior senator to apply to this.

I can allurements so that it doesn't get forgotten about and left empty in my estimate so I can still get my qualifications done, those type of things. I can also come back and put efficiency factors on there. I can put notes on this particular subject, providing information to others about this particular picture of what I was thinking about or even maybe what questions I need to bring up with my senior estimate to make sure that we've addressed this particular. I can have Web links to this if I want to have a Web link to the sheet down below here since I use a template, it brought in an assembly.

But now this is a forensic picture and I'm going to pretend that this picture on the job is an LED fixtures. So I'm going to correct that by simply telling the software a different narrative, by telling it this different narrative. It's bringing that idea into the Senate. It's alarmed. It let me know that it doesn't have enough information. It still needs to know the size that I want. So here's my size options of that particular type. Now that that's been dealt with, the alarm disappears.

And I know I'm ready to do that on occasion or that I'm going to get this true in my application. Now, I'm a delete the fluorescent lamps that I don't need because I'm a buy this with little lamps in it, but I also have some other elements like the support elements of these are things I'm providing. I can simply turn those on. And those are going to go into my itemized bill material for me to pull pricing from my database already or go solicit pricing from.

But in this case, the wallet that I'm planning on buying this picture pretty ripped and that's not something I want added to my investment of this is going to be provided with that picture when I receive it. So I'm not adding extra labor at this moment. I'm not adding extra cost. If I need to make a price change on a particular item, I can surely do that on the carry a budget value in here won't change the quantification of how much of the subject I'm getting.

I can do all that right down here as well as reach inside my database and grab other component elements that might be needed. It is not a subject like that. Out of my database. I can add incidental values for whatever reasons. Here I'm adding. Spare parts, a man, each one I want a value of 50 cents for that I might put a note on. Here is why I'm doing this. So I'm getting that added value to this assembly.

These are things I can do at any time. I can also grab imaging and put imaging in here. Not something I would typically take the time to do during the swimming cycle, but once again, moving forward when we're successful, putting the information, putting a sheet right there so that my field people can see that information and particulars about it. Now, if I say this is going to be alarmed, it'll show up alarmed anywhere. There's a final value to take me back to this alarm when I get the answers that I needed to make sure that this is a confirmed value that I want, I can, of course, turn that alarm off.

And not having that concern anymore or that possible in my estimate. With this video here, I'm going to do a little bit of take off, but we're going to talk about the attributes and how the attributes are going to influence this and said, my Esmay are thinking about what Hangar's support system, whether I need a Grimoire assembly, whether I need junction box on. I can turn those. Well, it's on as well as I can also control the hangar environment that I'm in or even the attachment of the hangar, it's going in, concrete is going and drywall is just going on a metal.

But I can tell us off that information. I can hold that information and it will build the interior based on this information. So now I've eliminated the need for my estimate to do that. For themselves, if I have a measurement that's a vertical only measurement, I can tell the sun for that which will maybe deflect and put a different supporting method in there, even possibly a different labor. And within this platform, we can also have different labor units of field labor from shop labor.

So if you do prefab and you make components as a prefab before they go out, I can have the software identify that and break those labor units out, you know, down here as well. I have a structural elevation in an item elevation of the night and that by telling the software that I will also get the software to as long as part of the assembly to actually put the right support methods in there is the right length of all three. If you go to a mental extract, provide the right drop when I need extra cable dropping down a wall or conduit dropping down the wall for a switch or something like that.

It'll also hold that information, it's going to be one of the key elements mentioned in the development of our modeling solutions, where we're going to be able to pull information from an estimate that was done in a two dimensional drawing and had that provided right into a three dimensional drawing and start producing that information for us so that we don't have to take that as another step in our business here. I'm going to go through. Revival of the Spack and how the stick is used, making the spec as a helper, if I was in the field and I needed to produce a material item, I would tell this helper here, I need you to go down to the trailer and I want you to grab a particular item.

Now, you're going to find him on the right hand side of the trailer on the second shelf. He's going to find a box marked trouble. And I want you to reach in that box and bring back the material element. That is, in a sense, what I told the software once, so that now the software knows exactly what to provide to me. So when I select this particular what we call spec, it's in a sense a material system that says here, this is what I want you to pick from and use on this particular estimate for each of these items you see here.

On the right hand side are things that match up to this particular material spec, no matter what decision that's made or answers. If the answer masonry decision type or concrete, it's going to provide that type of support system are anchor. So those if then statements are handled, I can then go down to a particular element and I can make the adjustments of that element. So we're going to go ahead and do that. We're going to take that particular speck and we're going to just a few items on.

All right, so if you look at the wiring device here, I've selected a particular type, I can select a particular manufacturer. We're no longer limited to having a single manufacturer representing a product in our database. And that can also describe it to my helper by in this case and pass the voltage or even color of this device here on I get the device, the color change. I'm asked it just to provide an orange device. From my devices, and then I'm gonna come down to my place and I'm going to change those plates to be white and colored, pretending here that my engineer is a complete Tennessee bull fan and his signature on all his projects that have white device or orange devices in White Plains.

Now, I've done a little bit of setup, you're going to actually see me use this picture in a little bit and you're going to see the result of this back. But I'm only giving this a name. I'm say, Tennessee Wolf Mansbach. Now, the software is learned a new spec. This is something I can apply in the future on any other project without having to take any more adjustments or if I've taken a particular job often once back, I'll be able to make this choice later in the software rebuild to take off for me.

So let's do some switch, take us using those in the dynamic assemblies. Now, as I go through this switch, this takeoff pad speeds up the process because I'm not digging through a database, I'm literally going to one button where a series of questions are being presented to me and I'm going to respond to those questions. I want a single device, zero three eight zero four ways, five of these on the project, 30 of them, 30 in there.

So as I did so, the software took that push it through that spec over there and selected the right components and even made the decisions on a single game box single being placed here. I'm going to change the quantities. You have three devices in the gang of robots. Take up one of those. And you'll see here that this operation up here, I did three game bots, three game gameplay. I did not have to try to find that assembly that was pre-built this way or accidentally grabbed the wrong assembly that provided the wrong information in the estimate.

Now, in the case of. That switch assembly that I responded, I'll put another one in here. I push that through this particular spec, it's fleshed out this material items. Now I'm going to ask this software to push it through our new spec. I will make one note here. I did change some things, my database, so that this spec will actually fail. It's going to come back and say, all right, let's see what you're asking for.

But as soon as I went to your shop or your trailer could not find those objects and you'll see it right there. But when I hover over there, it actually tells me that it says here you've asked me things I cannot find. I did find these other things for you, though. I found these other color choices for other manufacturers in your database that can provide that. So now I need to either make that correction, either add that item back into my database that I took out to make this thing sell today.

But if that's really not an item available, then I need to follow the software space of the other elements, make the change that I need to make so that once again I get the right material into my estimate. And I'm not asking for something that is actually not available and assuming that I have it in my estimate. So once that's done, I'll ask the software to resolve that problem and it has dealt with that problem and put the right material into my estimate.

So even keeping us from making a mistake. In this take, we're going to do a little bit of a. To take off where I'm going to select a particular assembly, I'm once again going to a single button here and I'm answering the questions on one half of three No. 12 No. 12 ground. The make up percentage I want is 10 percent. I my take off my footage. And get my number of segments suffers, push that through that speck and given me the response that I'm asking for now, I'm a pretend that at this stage I assumed that it was half inch.

And then I find a note that there was actually a three quarter inch minimum on this project. I don't have to change anything except one of my answers. So I'll go to my conduit and answer. I'll change that to three quarter inch and the software rebuild that accordingly, swapping out all the elements that are required for that, even swapping out the junk box scales. So I have the right junction of boxes being purchased and on three quarter inch. The last thing we're going to talk about.

Is it or take off? Now, I've introduced a couple specs here, I've introduced a copper spec and I've introduced aluminum spec, now I'm coming down here and I'm taking an assembly off Peter Wise, where I tell the software the information it needs to know to maybe make the decision of what size copper and what size ratio I need by telling you that the ambassador's the length of this and the software is going to then use lookup tables within the system and has now designed the filter accordingly.

It's given me three shots into it if I use copper. A copy this duplicated in the miasmic giving me now what if scenario, but if I take the job off with copper, what if I take it off of aluminum? Now, I'm going to ask Sopher to push that particular carpet measurement through a different spec, in this case, my aluminum spec. And I'm going to see the results of that design instantaneously. And I can look at that material and now see what science or what size raceways is going to handle that same 400 AMP service.

I can then, of course, eliminate which one. I don't want, in my estimate, having no proper estimate that's literally been designed with me prior to me doing the work outside the system and then coming in here and finding the corresponding assembly to get that. Now, on this one, we've taken it even to the extreme where the Sofra can actually do all the faulty calculations as well. So you can see a lot more questions are going to be in this assembly, not just impasse to Vietnam, answering faulty answering fazes them and saying, you know what's neutral I'm having.

Wolf, the percentage I want to use for ambient temperature rate, I want to use weather space above the roof or not proper ground number available to them in the run, just like the last one. And, of course, take up my length and my count in the offers that compound. Design. OK. Now we're going to talk about Life Takeoff's. In life now I've done all this to up to this point by just manually putting in about now in my audit trail tells me, which estimated that what time they did that, and it also tells me was a manual take off because I don't see any lift out link.

So in Live Count. That pushed. From that show. Are we seeing the graphical take off laptop screen? I'm seeing your slide about graphical take off. Yes. OK. All right, I'll just start showing up in my audience here. Sorry about that. Looks so graphical. Look up. We're going to get rid of the means of using paper and a method outside the system. A lot of us have been exposed to some form of this in in the world today, even in just rearguing drawings.

But we can treat these like paper. We can do manual takeoffs, we can market the drawings and plans. But you're going to see that this is going to directly connect the take off that I'm doing into my estimate and the lack of time. I mean, actually just kind of jump right to that and talk a little bit more about those points as we do the take off here. So in this view, you're saying we're going to take out some conduit?

I'm opening up that same assembly as before. I'm answering the number of words I want. If you notice, that already retained the answers that I had a moment ago suddenly had to actually answer one question. Now I'm going to click where I want to play junction boxes in this run. Bending the conduit in this case right here by holding down the ship, my keyboard running that cross, releasing that actually put in a box in the corner, holding down the shift key here to get to my panel.

And now I'm hitting the spacebar, telling the software I want that additional measurement of five to added at the end of this run. To me, from the ceiling down the top of the panel, I can do as many of these measurement assemblies connected or disconnected from one another by simply grouping these measurements and getting those into my report here. So this drawing is now something that I can use to push my team members on the field of what I had in my mind for the Tapout.

They can follow this or they're going to be able to question that and we're going to be able to make adjustments here in a moment.

So that said, live to my estimate. And have to do anything other than just what I did on that, trying to get that portion take off. So here's my actual measurements. Here's the values that are carried in. And I set them in cases, other changes I might want to do add or just those material elements. And the software is not built up that materials. And this line item, unlike the others, is directly connected to the drawing.

But come back to the drawing and make an alteration to any of this information. I changed my mind or changed the pathway as soon as I released that the software is now changed that value in my estimate, I move it to another direction. It's changed that value investment. In other words, I can see a life impact of these decisions and I'm now making in corresponds to the design and a value. I can make that economic decision, not just a convenience decision.

In our day to day. Now, here, we're going to do some picture counts, some go back to that picture designation that we created that automatically created a unique takeoff that for this job with my pictures, there's our type that we just created a moment ago. So I'm going go to my TV fixture, I'm just like that. It's going to take me over to the drawing and I'll make quantify those. AP. Now, like I said, I can go around and I can manually select these objects, simply finding the object and clicking on.

No different than I would with a paper environment. I'm done with that until the summer I'm finished, and now you'll see a quantum debate that had already taken off and these new four that we've taken off. Another method of using this solution is to have the software do an oracle, so instead me run around doing all that clicking, hunting and finding those subject matters. I can literally grab a sample off the drawing software and look for different rotations. I can tune it to the drawing so I have dirtier drawings or more congested joints that I can turn it to that particular drawing.

And over here in the background, you can see that the software is already starting to take off and it's going to locate all those two by four fixtures. So so far found those two by four fixtures. It's telling me exactly how many are left to get quantified in the project. So if I select that, you'll see that there was 155 potential matches that it noticed that had already counted 12. So there's only the remaining. If I want to confirm that ice and soft represent those out on the drawing so I can zoom out and confirm that not only did it find the remaining two by fours, but it was also smart enough to locate but not put them in the ad quantity of agreeing to my estimate.

They zoom in, you'll notice that there's a mixed bag of A's and B's fixtures here. So I need to teach suffer. The difference between the two is in the first place. It's looking for that object shape. And the second one I'm going to do and this is a patented process with our solution where I can come in here and I can say now that you found all the two by fours, I'd like you to do a secondary pass over those and isolate the A's.

I'll do the same thing with the next picture type being the B. Confirming that there's no other types I can close that down in and also from the left hand side, this soft has not taken that gross quantity and it's not breaking and isolating the A's from the deep fixtures now that I've taught it, that it now knows everything it needs to know to go and quantify these two by four fixtures and to isolate A's and B's fixtures from one another. So if you notice there on the bar at the bottom, I can then select that and I can say, please repeat this process on all these remaining drawings and quite frankly, I can turn my back or I can go take them off another subject matter.

And I know that the software is going to quantify and separate those for me and have those quantities ready for when I get to that drawing, I can report him to my estimate and have that work done. It's quite a time saver, but it's not just a benefit, that timesaver. There's an awful lot of times where I'm going to use this to search drawings and look for things. I can download all the drawings on a project. So if I have the mechanical drawings, architectural drawings, I'm looking for a subject matter that's on my actual drawing.

But I don't know where this motor is. But I have to run a circuit to to make sure I've got power to this motor. All I've got is a motor schedule, my actual drawings. I can do the same type of search given, suffer the name and tell to go out and search. For that, not just on this drawing, maybe on drawings, I'm not I'm only using. OK. Now, I'm going to talk about life in what I call field show and tell Magin I've done my assignment.

This is the estimate that now my field personnel can be looking at this drawing and they can be printing this off me as a PDF, that type of thing. But they come across a problem. They've taken a photograph of that problem. They can't access me as a project manager just yet, but they can upload that file right into this folder. They can then draw up a link on the drawing where that file was taken or that picture was taken.

Now, when I have time to come to the drawing, I can come here. I can see that icon. We can get on a phone conversation. I can literally look at what the user is trying to explain to me. This problem, this provides not only, like I said, better communication, but imagine how strong your aspects would get by providing this information as well. Showing information that's up above that ceiling where that information is, so when I do this, I can filter that out.

I don't have to print this drawing with those notes or those images on them. I can organize all of this. I can even have filters that separate users. So if I have multiple users looking the same, drawing same time, doing take off, I can turn the filter onto just what I'm doing. And so that I am just seeing and I'm not getting kind of caught like a cat in a fishbowl watch and get mesmerized by what my partner is doing on the job.

I can focus on what I'm doing in the eyes. I can turn that filter off and make sure that we haven't missed anything or we haven't double anything. We're going to talk a little bit about the extension, where the material comes to a head and where we're going to solicit that information with our purchasing power through trade service. Then we're going to talk a little bit about the change management and we're going to try to do this a little bit quicker.

We are running tight on time. In change management. You're going to see that in the project. I can go down and I can focus just in the climate change pricing of that project, we've already talked about the setting, the bar in between. You'll see here that we've broken the access to change management into three tabs RFP request for pricing tab. Our proposed change order, our original contract comes in here. These are proposed changes. Maybe a fifth person is going to put this note in here stating, I need a price on certain subject matter.

That's their first access point. They maybe don't have access to due pricing. Maybe you don't even want them to access an individual price in case they're opening the solution up in front of clients out in the field, that they can surely tell me that they need this request for price. Then I can take that and I can turn that into a proposed change order. Managing the proposed change in the stage of the proposed change orders is important as well. How many are pending, how many rejected which were approved as they become approved?

How do they change my contract to date? Giving the statistics stand here at the bottom that allow me to see that information as a whole or as well broke out and look at the different elements of cost or how our subcontracts have changed due to this change order, our quotes have changed. As well. Not information for management. He also knows that one of those is alarmed. So once again, I might alarm it to my attention because it's a pending changeover that hasn't been approved.

And now I need to get that approval or the next job site meeting I'm going into. I can then make this freeing up just the unapproved change orders, walk in there, bring the subject up, try to get that process moving forward. Then the last half, as I change or Tapsell, any change or becomes officially approved will show up on this. So once again, maybe my field personnel and access that change order and see the approval process move forward with them doing that work.

Once again, this is a very fluid system, so you can control what and what is not being presented. So key members and that is controlled by their login so individuals can access certain tools, individual accounts and access only certain projects. Have a lot of control and they can you manage the security? Of that. We're talking about reports here, you're seeing me go through and actually generating a few reports and grabbing some examples that are in the system that you can customize.

Obviously, these reports, anything you've seen, the platform you need to be a part of or not part of a document and the change our solution provides to different document client cell document that puts cell values in front of the client and a cost document that would keep internal to our county, including our budget adjustments into our projects. Here's an example once again, you have a lot of control over this. You can put watermarks in this. It's kind of what we used to use in the old days, CHRISTL records type of functionality where you can get very creative.

You can even ask the software within this unique report to do custom map. So if there's a couple values that you'd like to tally up and have totals in another part of the report, the soft can actually do that. Mansmann as well. Last night, we're going to talk about here carrying this information into other solutions. I've already mentioned about job cost budgeting and accounting so I can share information, other solutions into accounting, for example. I'm going to give you here because I don't carry much accounting system around with me.

So I'm going to ask Soffer to look out there. So I'm taking the information in the extension. I'm asked this offer group this information down, so not just the materials here that I'm looking at, but I'll be able to group it out. I can actually tell suffered. There's three groupings already built in the database. And when I want to go solicit pricing through Draitser, I can simply do that here. I've now asked from the vendors that I'm participating with, this offers automatically group this material into by lots.

I've also gone through with selected which vendor I wanted to price certain material groups, not everybody will bid or price everything. So I've created that. And now they have a unique custom materials that's going out to each of these vendors literally come down and press one button in. Any participating vendor is going to have their system think that pricing is going to come directly back from that system and present it to me. Not only individually. We're looking that, but also in the results, Pat, so I can see how that information came back, insufferable, cherry picked the best price, I can obviously just tell the stuff that I hadn't complied to that.

Or I can go through an individual price and say, listen, I want to reject this price or I want to accept a different price from a different vendor. I'm a complete control of what gets presented. But when that presents that into my estimate, it's not just updating the price that I'm carrying in my bid. It's also going to carry forward with it the other data. So the manufacturer of that person selling me the material catalog number of what that item is, you know, which vendor that price came from.

So if I scroll over here to the right, I will not only see that data, but I can also then filter this out. I can say show me the material of what I'm buying from Graybar, what I'm buying from West, or what I'm buying from HD. I just simply go into that header and tell them the software that I'd like to filter that out. Give me the extra Atlus material, because now I have all that information, I now have also the means to push into my middle management solution and be able to submit on the controlled elements that I have carried in my bed because I made an economic decision to do so.

So that's where tracer comes into play with a solution. Like I said, it's not just a national average price anymore that is carrying into my bed, but it's giving me that ability to do spider exchange directly connect to my local area vendors. Now, push off here. Last middle manager to. Using the trace item database of four million items where we have cataloged pages, technical specifications, all that uploaded in the solution so that I can grab that material as I stated, and put it into my.

Middle manager, which will help me assist me and getting my son together, I can have editing tools in there where I can circles highlight, put notes on that type of thing on any cut sheet. I can then make that electronic submittal direct to my client my client takes. That makes me other edits to that accepts and or rejects those models. As that comes back, I will have a log of that information, knowing what I need to do next, what I need to handle.

As far as rejected Smedley's get those resubmitted. If I make another choice, what am I going to do and then go back to that solution. I'm going to bring up the next price that I wanted to carry in my estimate, making as little impact in my job cost as possible, or even knowing maybe how I'm going to push my vendor into that price of the price of crude. But all that is synonymous back and forth between the solutions. We're right at the top of our hour.

These are the resource and there's a resource link here for you to get in connection with a lot more data than what I've provided to you today. You can also get in contact with your local sales reps so you can set up an proper demonstration at this platform. Hopefully, I'll give you the information that will excite you in looking at this further and seeing how this applies to your own business. MEPA portfolio of products, services and content provide this for you.

Again, you can come back and visit this video and get a little bit more of this information. But I'd like to get to the Q&A session and see if we have a couple of questions we can quickly answer. Thanks. Thanks so much, Rob, and that was that was fantastic and I do recognize that we're a little bit over three o'clock, but if people would like to stick around for a few more minutes, we'll do a few questions and then anything that we can't get to.

Trimble will be happy to follow up with you guys. So the first question, we had a couple of questions about the database and how data is managed. So can the data reside on like a private server for the company or does it have to be in the cloud?

Now it's in the cloud for obvious security reasons. We need to keep it in that location. You don't want somebody to be able to pull that data out of there, especially we have a lot of clients that really pushed us into this because they in the past had employees that would grab that data and go off and hang their own shingle or go to another competitor. So, no, this information stays secure on our servers.

Hmm. All right.

And how do you manage the database? There's a database manager in the solution, so typically a client's going to sign or have what comes out of a group product champion, but you can have anybody that can have access to that solution. But I would like to use your security protocols to limit that access. But you can do that through the project manager solution. That gives me a lot of capability so I can actually be in. System manager making changes to my database, making material price changes, adding manufacturers that might be without having my users out of the system.

I'm doing that. It's all of life solutions so I can completely interact with that while and not impeding my other users. The solution? Thanks. And just to remind everyone, there is a short survey for you in the bottom right of your screen, we'd appreciate it if you would spend a couple of minutes filling that out during the Q&A. And we'll give you a couple of minutes after before we close up. So, Robin, what are the requirements to get up and running with the software?

Well, really, there's not much requirements now I'm going to say there's suggestions more than there's requirements, the requirements we're kind of going through. We need an Internet connection. We need Windows space machine because there is a client that gets pushed to that. It's not just using HDTV interface, it is using it in client call. That's where we get the TSA encryption that's needed to keep the information secure. But as far as that hardware goes, the standard Windows 10 configuration minimum required.

So that is all that's needed here. There is some suggested requirements on video cards and monitors that we would provide to you as well, where we try to encourage a high amount for that monitor that you'd be using your drawings on to get the best resolution out of that. But those are more suggestions than they are. All right, and let's just do one more question here. So what you've what you've shown us here today, is this the entire Trimble suite or is it modular?

So does this mean like does it include equipage change order, live count, things like that? Or does the end user require a license for each of those modules?

No, I was just busy make that clear for the person asking that question up front. But this is you're paying access to this entire suite. So it's still concurrent license model, meaning any investment I have to access. So I've paid for two people to be able access a solution at any one time, but that does not limit them unless you set your own security limits on that user. So I can have this, you know, twenty five logins to the solution if I'm paying for two person access and two people at a time can access these this complete suite.

So like I said, I could have an estimate open by one user. The other end could be opening up another assessment or change order, or those two users could be opening up multiple estimates, multiple change order so they can have complete access as long as you allow them with that log in when that user logs off. Now you have an axis that's free for another user cuz they would use their login to access to get more access. Nothing money can't fix.

All right, well, I thank you for that clarification, and I apologize to those that we haven't been able to get to your questions. There were so many great questions that got submitted. And like I said, we have your questions and your contact information. So Trimble will be following up with you. And you can also, if you have a question and didn't get a chance to submit it today, you can also follow up with Trimble as well.

Robin's contact information should be on the top right of your screen. So I think that will wrap it up. So on behalf of electrical contractor magazine Enterable, I want to thank everyone once again for attending this webinar. And thank you, Robin, for this fantastic presentation. I feel like I understand the software so much better. So please don't forget to fill out the survey. It can be found on the bottom right of your screen. I'll just give everybody a couple of minutes.

I'll leave the the webinar open for a couple of minutes so you can answer that. And also, please be on the look at look out in your email for the recording of this event. It should be available soon. So have a great rest of your day, everybody, and we hope to see you at a future webinar.