Stevens Construction’s preconstruction team needed a faster, more accurate way to turn around estimates. By switching from desktop software to Ediphi’s web-based platform, they cut estimating time in half, improved conceptual estimates with minimal design data, and won more projects thanks to quicker, high-quality proposals.
Watch Interview
Headquarters:
Florida, USA
Annual Projects:
30–40 projects per year
Team Size:
6 estimators in preconstruction
Specialization:
Negotiated projects (not design-bid-build)
"It's a book about continuously improving. Can we shave five seconds, two seconds, one minute, one hour out of every process we're doing?" — Nick Burkel, Director of Preconstruction at Stevens Construction
That focus on efficiency has shaped Nick’s career, which began 25 years ago as a project manager. After managing projects on-site for a decade, he transitioned into preconstruction, and today Nick leads a team of 6 as the Director of Preconstruction Services.
His team at Stevens, a Florida-based GC that sends 30 to 40 projects to construction per year, are laser-focused on producing great work, efficiently. With most of Stevens’ projects being negotiated as opposed to design-bid-build, they needed a way to turn around quality estimates, fast, from the earliest stages of a project through to completion.
"I was on the lookout for something that could provide robust preconstruction capabilities that we would need for project comparisons."— Nick Burkel, Director of Preconstruction at Stevens Construction
From there, Nick reached out to the Ediphi team to set up a trial.
First, the Ediphi team helped Nick import his cost database into Ediphi. With their own data in the platform, they were ready to start testing. “We were up and running pretty quickly doing estimates. We were testing it, we were utilizing it, and we were seeing a lot of efficiencies,” Nick said.
These positive early signs lead Nick to bring the rest of his team into the trial. “We got access to a couple of the guys on our estimating team, and they instantly fell in love with it,” Nick said. Why? In addition to being web-based, easy to use, and a snap to set up, Ediphi’s unique approach to preconstruction is a step-change improvement from other tools.
“It’s a system’s based approach to estimating,” Nick explained. “It breaks things down into units, rooms, and systems, and we’re definitely seeing that speed up the estimating process.” This lets the Stevens team make quality estimates even on very limited design information.
“We’re doing it right now on a project where we don’t have a floor plan. We just have the number of offices, exam rooms, and bathrooms they want. We can plug that in, and when they ask us ‘how much square footage do we need?’, now we can tell them. It’s pretty powerful.”
With the team bought in, Nick decided to pull the trigger and implement Ediphi fully.
As most preconstruction professionals can attest, implementing a new technology can be a bit like pulling teeth. Not Ediphi, though.
“There was a roadmap provided right at the beginning,” Nick recalled. The Ediphi team set up a series of training sessions for the Stevens crew, which were recorded so the team could re-watch them.
“We were up and running a lot quicker than other software I’ve implemented in the past. The training made it easy and it wasn’t like we had to learn a whole lot of new stuff. It was pretty intuitive.”
Over the course of a few weeks, the whole Stevens preconstruction team learned how to use Ediphi. From there, they were off to the races.
“One of the pinch points we had was conceptual estimating. We're now able to put those together very quickly and, sometimes, that's the difference between us getting the project or someone else.”— Nick Burkel, Director of Preconstruction at Stevens Construction
He’s also found huge time savings as the director, reviewing the work his estimators are putting together. Couple that with Ediphi’s slick Excel integration that keeps their reports on-brand and in the format their clients come to expect, Nick and his team find themselves using more and more of Ediphi, including the General Conditions and General Requirements module. When asked if he’d recommend Ediphi to others, Nick was quick to reply.
“I would, and I have,” he said.
.svg)
.svg)
