David Black, owner of Stone Will, understands the importance of estimating.  David has seen businesses succeed and fail on the back of their estimating, and says, “It is often pot luck that decides whether contractors make money or lose money.  Estimating is one of the hardest skills to get, and I’ve seen companies go bust on the back of getting estimates wrong.”  On the other side of the coin, Stone Will, who specialise in large scale retaining walls and employ 18 staff, are reaping the benefits of getting estimates right. 

At the Landscape Australia Expo in Sydney, 2006, David recognised that Benchmark Estimating Software could take the guess work out of estimating, so he purchased it on the spot.  It is now 12 months since purchase and David uses Benchmark for all of Stone Will’s estimating, producing upwards of 200 estimates in that time and winning work. 

Maximising profitability and getting a competitive edge
Thanks to Benchmark, Stone Will now have greater control of their estimates.  David says, “With Benchmark I am easily able to monitor where we win and where we lose on our jobs, and then make the necessary adjustments to our estimates in the future to maximise our profitability.  We are also able to fine tune our estimate detail so our bids are more competitive.” 

Saving time As David says, “Stone Will is able to chase more work” because Benchmark delivers huge time savings.  David explains how Stone Will benefits from features like:

>	The Item Library - “Our Item Library is so valuable; it is customised to our work, contains all the information we need to do the job and with the click of a button it appears in our estimate.”
>	Progress Claims - “I do progress claims all the time and Benchmark makes it so much faster.  I used to type the claims into spreadsheets manually but now I just click a button and Benchmark produces them for me.  Also, the progress claims automatically update when I add variations to a project which is really good for us.”
>	The Export to Microsoft Project - “This is brilliant.  If you need a job schedule produced straight from your estimate it saves so much retyping.”
>	The Job Cost Export to Excel - “This gives us so much more control of our costs right through the business, and again this report is produced from Benchmark at the click of a button.”

David concludes, “Getting a new system and changing my processes was daunting at first, but in the long run Benchmark has saved me so much time and money.  The training courses were very thorough and gave me the skills and confidence to produce very good estimates.  Overall, Benchmark has given me greater control of our costs; it makes our estimates, and Stone Will as a whole, much more competitive.”

Click here for Stone Will's contact details