While cloud computing and the abundant project data it provides have transformed everything from construction management to conceptual design, preconstruction estimating remains stubbornly unchanged, with an estimated three quarters of estimators still using manual spreadsheets or some form of on-premise estimating software. Ediphi and its founder, Dustin DeVan, want to change that.
Estimating “has seen the least change in the software providers, if you think about the disruption that’s happened in project management,” says DeVan, who previously founded preconstruction bidding platform BuildingConnected before selling it to Autodesk in 2018. “Almost everyone has shifted from Prolog or some of these other desktop applications to cloud solution providers like Procore or Autodesk.”
DeVan said that hasn’t happened with preconstruction estimating, but, with Ediphi, he wants to help construction companies move to the cloud.
Varying regional costs and project needs are often cited as reasons estimating remains siloed.
“Every company that has estimating software that you access via their virtual desktop, they create a different server for each location that they operate in, which means that they’re actually disparate systems across the organization that don’t realize any of the benefits of being cloud-based,” DeVan says.
Many estimators also still look at their estimates as a competitive advantage. They see it as both a science and an art, DeVan adds.
“There is intellectual property in what you put into an estimate, but you’re not sacrificing that when you use us as a cloud application,” DeVan says. He added the biggest vulnerability to construction data remains people assisting a cyber intrusion, not cloud-based systems.
Ediphi provides a proprietary set of estimation capabilities, integrating data sheets and unit mixes. It also gives estimators configurability to create assemblies for several scales of projects. For example, during a project’s earliest stage, with just rough material quantities based on general geometry, Ediphi can match this information with historical cost data to make estimates. Floor-height ratios and perimeters can be used to calculate costs.
“One thing that we really struggle with in our current estimating platform is we can’t do formulas,” says Kyle Bonde, senior estimator at Hensel Phelps, which has been testing Ediphi in a pilot since October. “[Estimates] tied to perimeter area allows us to use dynamic formulas in the quantity cell before you have a takeoff. That’s what this thing’s built for.”
Seven Hensel Phelps regions are participating in the pilot program, which involves roughly $2 billion in work.
Bonde said that the platform also brings transparency, which allows Hensel Phelps to learn how estimates were derived.
“It’s kind of colorful,” he says. “Once you realize, ‘I can track the steps on any of my or anybody else’s estimates,’ you realize how powerful it is. That’s the key to estimating—following your tracks. If I need to send an estimate to someone, or I need to follow their tracks to find out how they came up with [an estimate], I can do that.”
Bonde also said the user interface having buttons is easy for estimators to grasp because they’re similar to quantity cells in a spreadsheet.
“I’ll spend an hour with somebody and as long as they’re a little tech savvy, they’ll be able to use it,” he says. “Maybe two hours.”
In April, DPR Construction’s preconstruction teams agreed to begin a transition to Ediphi’s preconstruction estimating platform after a similar pilot program.
Alan Watt, a preconstruction technology executive at DPR, said in a statement the agreement was to “streamline our workflows for better efficiency, aggregate and improve the quality of our data and reduce our reliance on custom in-house tools and disconnected applications.”
