100%
Estimate Efficiency
$200M+
Projected revenue growth within the next five years.
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Case Studies

Blach Construction

Blach Construction Gets Connected
Published on March 11, 2020

How ProEst helped improve estimating collaboration and workflow.

Background

One of northern California’s premier commercial builders, Blach Construction has created and renovated educational, institutional, mixed-use and work- place structures for Bay Area clients since 1970. In the fifty years since its inception, Blach has grown to include over 200 employees in two locations and maintains relationships with more than 650 qualified subcontractors. Last year, the company prepared 120+ estimates and generated $300M+ in revenue, with goals of $400M-500M+ within the next five years.

Enabling Real-Time Collaboration

After years of trial and error, Blach was eager to settle on an estimating platform that fully met their expectations—and they got it. From the very first day of ProEst implementation, Gravelle saw marked improvements in user convenience and workflow. “The biggest benefit for us was how easy the solution was to use out of the gate. It’s easier to set up templates, it’s easier to find items in the database and it’s easier to share your estimates with other people in the department, all in real-time.” It was that “shareability,” says Gravelle, that immediately set ProEst apart from other solutions the company had used before. With ProEst, he noted, every estimator has access to every estimate, making it simpler to edit on the go and still have accurate and updated information in time to present to their clients. Gravelle especially appreciates embedded ProEst task features, that allow multiple users to contribute to the same estimate—connectivity and collaboration tools that changed the game for Blach estimators.

ProEst makes it easy to make changes on the fly, because every estimator has access to every estimate.”

A Commitment To Client Success

Gravelle was equally impressed with the engagement of the ProEst team. Their willingness to meet face-to-face at the company’s San Jose headquarters spoke volumes, he said, about ProEst’s belief in their product and commitment to client success. Multiple training options was an advantage, too; Blach used in-person tutorials and embedded training videos to educate new users on ProEst features and functions, flexibility that accelerated adoption and led to more productive estimating right away. “ProEst has a really good educational video section within the software,” said Gravelle, “so it’s easy for somebody to watch how to do things and basically learn the program themselves.”

A Commitment To Client Success

Supporting Goals For Innovation And Growth

As a company, Blach construction has a strong commitment to innovative building concepts, materials and techniques, and found that ProEst supported their vision for future-forward thinking and growth. In the past year alone, says Gravelle, Blach has doubled their estimate output—from 60 to 120—and achieved significant increases in annual revenue, forecast to reach $400m-500m within the next few years. According to Gravelle, those are the kind of results that prove the day-to-day value of ProEst and differentiate the platform from other estimating products. He summed it up this way: “If your company needs to customize, change and share estimates without a hassle, and not be tied down to license agreements, then ProEst is kind of a no-brainer”.

About the client

Over the years, Blach Construction estimators had implemented—and replaced—a number of construction-specific estimating platforms that failed to deliver all the functionality they required. Largely dissatisfied with programs that they considered “old, clunky and out of date,” Blach continued to look for a solution with greater speed, stability and user convenience. When Blach estimator Spencer Gravelle heard about ProEst from industry colleagues in 2018, he met with the ProEst team to explore the software’s features and functions in detail—and quickly determined that the ProEst solution was a good fit for Blach’s commitment to innovation and excellence.
https://www.blach.com/

About ProEst

ProEst provides advanced construction estimating capabilities for leading companies and public sector clients in the United States, Canada and Australia. Our cloud-based platform combines cost estimating, digital takeoffs and bid day analysis in a single powerful solution— a proven way to reduce costs, ensure accuracy and streamline pre-construction workflow.
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