Greg Norris, B2W Software, Inc.
Technology Makes it Easier to Build Bids Based on Actual Past Performance Retrieving data is a big part of the bidding process for utility projects. API connectivity is amplifying the already important benefits that specialized software applications for estimating provides over spreadsheets. APIs can essentially automate data transfer, speeding up the estimating process by eliminating manual searches. Instant access to actual production rates achieved on active and past jobs is a great example of how estimators can benefit from API connectivity. What is an API? An API, or application programming interface, connects software and data sources to each other and provides a shared standard for interoperability. In simpler terms, the API is a messenger allowing two applications to talk to each other. An API can take orders or requests from a system, relay them to another system, and return the information to fulfill the order. When someone checks the weather or searches for airline travel options on a smart phone, they’re using an API. The API interprets their request for data, sends it to the weather reporting or reservation application, and sends the requested data back to the phone application. This type of API connectivity provides extensive benefits to construction estimators using specialized software to prepare their bids. That’s because retrieving data from various sources and systems is a major part of their work. Automating this effort saves time and ensures that the information is accurate and up to date. An API can connect the estimating software application with systems used for accounting, bid collection, contact management, and other functions. This eliminates the need to enter the same data in multiple places and ensures that all systems are alJULY, 2022
ways up to date with each other. Updating and retrieval of labor rates, equipment rates, and burdens are examples of how the API can eliminate the need to search for and enter data. An API can also automatically update pricing and other information from organizations such as vendors and subcontractors and keep job-cost identification codes up to date and in sync between estimating and accounting systems.
Using Production Rate Actuals to Inform Current Bids One of the most beneficial estimating breakthroughs with API connectivity involves access to data on past performance, what contractors typically refer to as production rate actuals. As estimators build new bids, seeing the production rates that crews from their company actually achieved in the past or are achieving currently on the same type of work is an obvious advantage. Getting that data, however, has historically been a labor-intensive, multi-step challenge. Now, with an API link between estimating software and the field tracking software application used for reporting labor, production quantities and equipcontinued on page 65
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