Estimating in a Volume Home Builder environment.

It is an understatement to say that every builder’s needs are different.  While there are common, core issues that almost every builder faces, each has specific concerns and priorities that can be improved through computer support.  Whether capturing sales, managing the administration process to site start, or preparing sales and tender documentation, there will be specific needs of a builder that must be addressed.

A comparison has been made between a volume homebuilder and a manufacturer – essentially – instead of the conveyor belt moving the house along the production line for assembly, the house stands still and the production line moves through it.  There are many parallel’s to be made from manufacturing, and the methodology we implement takes what we can from those processes.

Simplify the process.

What we need to do – is simplify the process of selecting and selling the house – so that people can choose what they like – so long as they stick within the parameters of our own production line ability.  To do this – for each of your homes, we need to determine a standard list of the things we will let customers choose as options or variations to this.  Many builders’ already work in this manner and have a variation price book to refer to for the sales consultants.  The biggest problem with this is quite often the book is unwieldy, and unused.  When the client says “I’d like to have a deck out the back of the house” – then the sales consultant will reach for the pad and pen, and ask how big they would like the deck – and submit a custom variation request, rather than pointing the customer in the direction of the three different size decks you have quoted in the variation price book.

Producing Faster Quotes = More Quotes = More Jobs

Sales Estimating

Sales Estimating allows the sales team to go through a "question and answer" process directly with your prospect. As they progress with styles, options and addon's, a sales quote is developed as is a detailed costing estimate.

Depending on how you cost and sell there are many options to this process like using touch screens, multiple stream options and the like. Below is an example of a sales estimating screen shot.

Production Estimating

Production Estimating is a very simple process – just select the geographic area or supervisor that is going to be looking after the job – this automatically selects the different suppliers and trades to use and possibly locations based costs, thus amending the estimate, which can have margins added for presentation of the sales quotation.

There are many other options and solutions we offer for volume homebuilders. Please refer to the BuilderMT Workflow Management Solutions on this site for more details.