ACS Construction Group Ltd (ACS) is a leading North West based Civil Engineering & Building Contractor based in Cheshire, serving clients nationwide.
Formed in 1997, ACS carry out full civil engineering and building works packages including groundworks, drainage and concrete packages to a number of sectors including the education, commercial/industrial, government, utilities/infrastructure, leisure, energy and renewable energy sectors. ACS Construction have an enviable reputation of providing safe and responsible building and civil engineering services, achieving project completion within budget and to the highest standards of quality.
ACS Construction were managing their estimating and cost management processes through an old DOS based system that they purchased back in the 90’s, they found the software was becoming very creaky and outdated and went out to the market to purchase a more modern estimating solution, that would provide transparency across their business. Richard Bell, Head Estimator at ACS Construction said “It was extremely important that we got the system right, we needed a solution that worked best for an estimating department and ticked all of our boxes including – a user friendly, modern estimating solution, On-Screen Takeoff with a direct link to the Dim sheet, a good library of both descriptions and resources which could also store data from historic projects which could be re-used.”
In total the business looked at 4 vendors including; Exact, Causeway, Conquest and Eque2, after multiple software demonstrations Eque2 ticked all of the boxes for ACS Construction whilst also offering them additional functionality such as the Project Enquiry Centre module, which would allow them to issue enquiries, drawings & revisions to subcontractors to enable them to analyse responses via an online portal, meaning they had one single point of contact for everything.
The business was extremely impressed with the implementation process, Richard Bell says “The implementation and training of the software was fantastic, the guy that carried out our training was clearly very knowledgeable and passionate about the system, it allowed us to start using all modules in an in-depth way very early on. We have also had a very positive experience with the technical support team, should we have any queries our emails and calls are responded to a dealt with in a very quick and professional manner”.
When describing how EValuate has helped ACS, Richard Bell commented, “Eque2’s EValuate has transformed the way the estimating department works, it is extremely user friendly, allows us to quickly and accurately build libraries, and we can also use data from historical projects and easily adjust the rates whilst also adding a settlement margin to our tenders. We can also assign cost codes to all resources which enables us to pull off reports around the resources and see which cost codes they are assigned to. The integrated On-screen Takeoff tool is brilliant allowing us to perform a fast accurate Takeoff from all file types, which also has a live link to the Dim sheet that enables amendments and revisions that automatically update the bill.
The Project Enquiry Centre module is very impressive, the module is flexible and allows us to track all of our responses from subcontractors in one place, there is no room for error as we can store loads of documents and accurately track where we are with our subcontractors and projects.
We are very happy with EValuate, it has saved us so much time as a business and allows us to ensure all of our processes are accurate and up to date, we are looking forward to our continuing relationship with Eque2.”
