ProEst Delivers on the Power of Cloud
Company: Curran Young Construction
Company Type: General Contracting, Construction Management and Design-Build
Specialties: Healthcare facilities, retail, leisure, industrial and manufacturing, senior and multi-family residential
Location: Bonita Springs, FL
Employees: 15 Years in Business: 3
A relative newcomer to the southwest Florida building industry, Curran Young was technology-focused from its inception in 2018, choosing technology provider partners that offered cloud-based solutions that would integrate seamlessly with other business systems. After conducting side-by-side comparisons of available options, the company chose ProEst as their estimating software, soon followed by Procore for project management. Today, Curran Young conducts business entirely in the cloud, eliminating their dependence on on-premise servers and other traditional systems infrastructure.
ProEst lets our estimators complete budgets in far less time, regardless of skill level."
As a company, Curran Young embraces technology as a means of differentiation and competitive advantage. “We did a lot of homework before we picked which applications we were going to use for different parts of the business,” said CEO Chris Curran. “We wanted to make sure that every- thing we used was cloud-based, and to some degree, that it was all integrated.” For Curran, ProEst checked all the box- es, being both cloud-based and able to integrate well with Procore and their BuildingConnected software. And like most contracting companies that move to the cloud, Curran Young appreciates the ability it gives their teams to be mobile and productive at the same time. Curran put it this way: “It’s faster, it’s lighter, and we don’t need server anymore.”
ProEst is faster and lighter than any software I’ve used in the past, and we don’t need servers anymore."
No less important to Curran and his team was a modern, clean-looking and accessible user interface. They found that older legacy estimating solutions were often heavy and unappealing to interact with, and as a new company, they wanted to get away from that. “As a whole, ProEst is easier to use than any software I’ve used in the past,” he said. That’s been a boon to users without a deep technology background, including Curran himself. And when it comes to creating assemblies, which is fundamental to their estimating process, he is the first to say that ProEst has no equal. “I know what it’s like to create assemblies in competing products,” he said, ”and it’s horrendous.” In fact, says Curran, he has attempted it—and given up—several times during his 20 years in the business, eventually turning to outsourcing due to how complicated and cumbersome the process was. With ProEst, all that has changed. “It still takes some thinking and experience in knowing how construction works,” he said, “but it’s relatively easy compared to the alternatives.”
Curran gives ProEst trainers high marks for their knowledge and personalized interactive approach to bringing Curran Young users fully up to speed on the features and functions of the platform. “I think it was awesome,” he said. “It was really informative and personal. It wasn’t just like watching videos or getting a manual. It was someone walking us through all these different scenarios live.” He’s equally enthusiastic about ProEst technical and customer service support. “ProEst is always right there,” he said. “They’re really available; we have no trouble getting ahold of them. We love that we can just pick up the phone... or get on a Zoom call. We feel like we matter to them, even though we’re a small company in Florida and they’re in California. They seem like a really good partner.”
ProEst updates are constant and automatic. We don’t always notice right away that’s it’s even better than it was before."
After three years of working with the ProEst platform, Curran remains impressed with the company’s ongoing commitment to innovation, which he says happens largely behind the scenes. “They never stop improving the product,” he said. “With cloud-based software, there comes a whole new level of innovation; it’s easier to roll out updates, and it’s constantly evolving and getting better.” ProEst updates are so seamless and unobtrusive, he reports, that it sometimes takes days or weeks for users to notice that improvements have been made.
Curran Young makes it clear that as a company, they are committed to advancing the industry by aligning themselves with project owners, architects, engineers, subcontractors and industry partners who share their technology-centric vision—and ProEst is now among them. “These are the kind of collaborations that promotes project success and elevates the building trade,” said CEO Chris Curran. “We’re confident that by working together, we can succeed today as well as benefit future generations.”
