1. How We Began

2. Wing's World: Tips for real life-(VISTA)

3. On Target

When Buildsoft founders and co-managing directors Jim Cunningham and Jackie Fogg first designed their estimating software some 20 years ago, they were certain of one thing. “We didn’t want to re-invent the wheel,” Jim says.

Their starting point was the tried-and-tested manual estimating method taught at TAFEs and universities. They kept the structure and terminology but adapted it to something that was quite rare in those days – dedicated software for the building industry.

Applying computer technology to traditional concepts resulted in packages that “give users the flexibility to do their estimates quicker and more accurately than when they do them manually,” Jim says.

In a nice twist, Buildsoft packages are taught in TAFEs and universities here and selected ones overseas.

Jackie brought computer science skills and Jim, management know-how from working with large building product suppliers.

Such is their faith in the basic estimating principles used in Buildsoft, these features in current packages are “nearly identical” to the originals, though they are continually updated with add-ons, such as job scheduling and complementary modules.

The products are taught as an accepted industry standard and are exported to 20 countries – from China to Canada, India to Indonesia. With some 5,000 users worldwide including an estimated 85% of large commercial builders in Australia, Buildsoft has products from smaller systems suitable for subcontractors and smaller builders, through to network software for large commercial construction companies and quantity surveyors.

More customer contact:
We have customer support representatives who get out to see clients as often as possible and the aim is for this newsletter to be another way to reach customers to:

Microsoft recently released a new operating system called Vista. The question is: should I upgrade today?

As with previous operating system releases by Microsoft, we have had many calls to find out whether the existing Buildsoft Global Estimating and Offsider systems run under Vista.

First off, we should say that Vista is not an upgraded version of Windows XP. When Windows XP was released, most software that ran successfully under Windows 2000 had few problems coping with the newer operating system.

The story though is very different with Vista. There are many Microsoft products which install or run happily under Windows XP that either don't install properly or don't work completely under Windows Vista. This means that most third-party software companies need to spend time working through the product and advising their clients whether their existing software is Vista-compatible.

Our advice:
We are still rigorously testing our software under the new Microsoft Windows Vista operating system. At this time, we don't advise our users to run their Buildsoft software under Vista. Users should not install Microsoft Vista with an immediate expectation that the software will run perfectly.

You should also be aware that there are four versions of Vista:

Assess your hardware:
There is another important aspect to consider before installing or upgrading with Windows Vista. A lot of older computer hardware is not adequate for the successful use of Vista.

In short, if the target computer doesn't have a dual core processor and at least 1GB RAM (2GB RAM is even better), it is probably a waste of time installing Vista even if all the third-party software is compatible.

So, it is very important to check your hardware before deciding whether or not to install Vista.

Final thoughts:
While there are many more things that you should probably know about Vista, we’ll leave you with just one more to think about.

Let's say you've eagerly and enthusiastically installed Vista and then found that you either don't like it or that some software doesn't work any more. Well, you've now got an unfortunate problem.

To go back to Windows XP, you cannot simply install Windows XP over the top of your Windows Vista system. Instead, you will need to reformat your computer, and go through the painful process of re-installing all of your software and backing up your current files.

In summary, don't rush to install Vista. Any updates to this advice will go up on our website so please keep checking it for the latest information.

Michael Gleecher is an estimator with a builder’s licence – a double act that he believes gives him an edge in the marketplace. When he started his own estimating business four years ago he also bought a house and renovated it. “Doing the demolition work myself and supervising trades gave me hands-on experience,” he says. It also showed that balancing analytical and practical skills suited his personality. “I like talking to subcontractors and suppliers and I found that as an estimator you’re not fighting with them, but talking to them, discussing and learning about their different methods of construction.”

Michael’s company name, PointBlanc, a variation on point blank, was inspired by the cover of a book his son was reading. “I guess I’m telling people that I’m on target.”

His niche is alterations and additions and new homes. He gives architects detailed trade breakdowns, providing an “unbiased estimate” for them to discuss with clients. “I’ll tell them how much the concrete is, how much for the carpet, the ceilings, the walls, and all the other elements that go into a house. It sets a target for them to some degree.”

Michael has a Bachelor of Building degree from the University of New South Wales. He can also draw on more than 20 years experience working for variously sized companies including French company Citra Constructions when it was one of the largest companies in Australia, Transfield and St Hilliers.

Periods of work as a contract administrator, for the new Parliament House in Canberra for example, turned him off that side of the business. “I didn’t like the amount of paperwork and red tape that you had to go through.”

Constant companion:
He prefers communicating with people, working either for his own company or intermittently for construction companies when they have too much work for their in-house estimators. He also relies on one constant in his life – Buildsoft software, which he has used since the mid 1990s. “It took me a couple of days to get used to it. I find it very user friendly.”

He welcomed the change from the DOS environment to Microsoft Windows. “If you have to look at a computer screen all day Windows is a much nicer environment. And it also integrates so well with other programs. I can copy and paste a summary of my trade breakdown into Excel and do a comparison with other builders who have given me their trade breakdowns.”

He warns that Excel is best used only for this type of quick comparison and strongly recommends using Buildsoft for full comparisons of estimates from subcontractors and suppliers, and for doing your own estimating. “With Excel it’s a blank piece of paper and you’re the one who has to invent everything from scratch. If you enter the wrong formula or enter a formula in the wrong place you’re stuffed. With Buildsoft the formulas are hidden. You can’t interfere with them and so whatever you do Buildsoft will multiply it out or add it up and you can’t make mistakes.

“You can estimate with all the different trades and code each trade, so for instance you may have concrete in five different trades but you code it to concrete and all those different areas will come into one comparison sheet called concrete.

The other big plus is BTOS (the Buildsoft Take-Off System). Michael only began using it a few months ago when he was working on a drawing at 1 to 500 scale. “BTOS allows you to bring drawings into the software and it doesn’t matter if they are in pdf or dwg or CAD files.”

He loves the flexibility and immediacy of taking quantities directly from the plans and drawings whatever the format. “You can enlarge the drawing or reduce it, give measurements to the software and BTOS will work out the scale. From that, it’s as simple as plotting points on the screen drawing to produce the required measurements for you then to cost.

“It also does not matter if you have, say, an unusually shaped car park or if there are a lot of curves in the drawing. You can click around the perimeter and BTOS will work out the area from which you can then do your costing. You may also have four walls that are three metres high and you can ask ‘what is the area of my walls?’ and the software allows you to build up other things from the one measurement.

“When I believe in something I talk about it and I’ve just found Buildsoft to be a great tool.”

Buildsoft is continuing to develop the MYOB Link, which will allow our estimating programs to interface with MYOB accounts. This facility will be available to both Global Estimating and Offsider Estimating Plus users as an optional extra, and will give improved job costing information.

While it is convenient to generate purchase orders from item information used in compiling an estimate, the MYOB Link will be able to deal with two types of purchase orders:

In the estimating system, the user is able to call up a list of suppliers and subcontractors from their MYOB program to assign to various items, and when convenient, generate purchase orders in MYOB. While some users will prefer to generate all the purchase orders for a job at one time, it is possible to generate purchase orders for MYOB from the estimate several times over.

Furthermore, the new Job Costing screen generated by the MYOB Link in the estimating system will not only display a single screen of totals and numbers comparing the estimated value of various trades with actual values from MYOB supplier invoices and payments. It will provide additional screens allowing the user to view lists of purchase orders or supplier invoices that belong to a particular trade as well as optionally showing the individual items within an order or invoice.

The Job Costing screen can also show details of credits or discounts applied to various MYOB supplier transactions.

Buildsoft started to develop the MYOB Link when the MYOB accounting programs were Premier v9 and Accounting v15. Since then, significant structural and data changes by MYOB to its recently updated accounting programs, Premier v10 and Accounting v16, required Buildsoft to make considerable changes to the MYOB Link to work with these new versions. These changes are now almost completed.

We have provided a limited number of beta (i.e. test) versions of MYOB Link to date to a small number of users, particularly anyone who had already enquired about it. The final release date will depend on the results and comments from these test versions, but we hope the product release will not be too many more months down the track. The current status of the MYOB Link will be available at our website (www.buildsoft.com.au).

The MYOB Link module will be available for $795 for new users.

The BTOS take-off module now allows speedier take-offs and helps with measuring from digital plans, such as CAD and PDF files, and also measuring quantities from paper plans via a digitiser. At the moment, the BTOS module is integrated into the Buildsoft estimating system as a separate and purchasable option. We have been getting a lot of feedback from customers using the module, and are using this information to make further improvements.

Most of these improvements are to facilities for dealing with CAD files; these are currently being finalised. Examples include the ability to:

We are still working on these and other changes and hope to be able to release them in the next few months.

Later in the year, non-users of the Buildsoft Estimating System will also be able to take advantage of the Buildsoft digital take-off via our specially developed stand-alone version of BTOS. This allows for the measuring of quantities from either a digitiser or CAD files, but transfers the results to either a spreadsheet or some other Windows-based program. In some cases, it can also transfer the results to other estimating systems.

Remember, Buildsoft is now an accredited member of the Autodesk® Developer Network, so future CAD changes and improvements will be available to BTOS users more quickly than before.

Most PC users have easy access to Microsoft Excel and it is a useful tool for transferring data between Buildsoft users and those without Buildsoft so that they can, for instance, add rates to a Buildsoft-generated estimate. So what is the best way to export Buildsoft data to MS Excel and import data from MS Excel into Buildsoft?

To export data from Buildsoft into Excel:

To convert an Excel worksheet (XLS) into Buildsoft, you must first convert this worksheet into the CSV (comma delimited or separated values) format.

To save the Excel file into a CSV format:

To import the CSV file into Buildsoft:

This procedure will need to be repeated for each CSV file to be imported. Data can also be imported into Price List mode.

NOTE: Buildsoft also offers a service for importing data from XLS format into Buildsoft format. Email the file to be converted to Buildsoft and we can then provide a quote on the cost of the conversion.

Our previous newsletter outlined some of the changes and improvements proposed for GES.NET. In this edition, we will discuss some additional features.

GES.NET will have an improved facility for restoring jobs and price lists. Currently, it is not uncommon for a job to be emailed as an email attachment. However, getting this attachment into the current estimating system requires a lot of manual steps. Depending on the email program being used, this could be improved to a single click.

In emailing programs that allow attachments to be opened by simply clicking on their filename, doing so with GES.NET installed will mean that one click will be all that’s necessary to restore a job or price list, even if the GES.NET program is not currently running. In this way, it will work in a similar way to clicking on an Excel spreadsheet file attachment that is automatically running Excel.

There are many other improvements in the general job and price list backup, restore and email facilities. One of these is the maintenance of a log, so a history of backed up, emailed or restored jobs and price lists can be viewed. Another is where the GES.NET program can either manually remind the user or automatically backup jobs and price lists that are constantly being worked on by users.

Currently, items, calcs or rate sheets can be changed, but it is often not clear when they were changed or by whom. In GES.NET, the date and time of the last change to each item,calc or rate sheet line is stored, as well as the name of the user where multiple users are working on the same job.

In this way, you will be able to view a summary of things changed in an estimate either after a certain date and time and/or by a certain user. The extent of summary information about the work done on a job or price list will be discussed in future newsletters.

In the Global Estimating System, there are three separate screens controlling lists: Job Manager controls the list of jobs, Price List Manager controls the set of price lists and Project Manager, the list of projects. In GES.NET, these are incorporated into an overall System Manager screen, controlled by various tabs. There are also tabs on the right-hand side of this initial screen, allowing many more details to be stored with each job.

The current estimating system allows users to enter information for jobs such as Site Address, Estimator and Date of Estimate. Many people have asked for the ability to tailor information on this screen, so GES.NET will allow the user to create up to 12 additional relevant prompts for each job.

The next newsletter will discuss further improvements in GES.NET.

Cars say a lot about their owners and Bill Bunting, dealer principal at Continental Cars, a family owned specialist Citroën dealer since the late 1950s, should know. He believes the manufacturer he represents has always “pushed the design envelope”, appealing to a “demographic of engineers and architects and designers who love a point of difference. They will choose a vehicle or a manufacturer that is not afraid to go out on a limb and make a statement.”

It stands out as a flagship product but at a reasonable, value-for-money price at around the $100,000 mark, says Bill.

“This is an entry point for a lot of the Mercedes cars. A lot of flagship cars start at $150,000. People in the know know that when choosing these Citroën cars you’re buying at pretty much the same level as the German car but at a different price point.”

Bill says that Citroën manages to do this because the car is still forging its name compared to the better known, generic, luxury German brands. “Growth is really good at the moment and, as with the branding of anything new in the market, you are always trying to pitch at a level to continue that growth.”

History is on the side of Citroën. The original C6 was launched at the Paris Motor Show in 1928, and was designed to be the first proper luxury Citroën. It also had the first six cylinder engine to be fitted in one of the French company's cars.

Citroën also caused a sensation in 1955, Bill says, when it “brought out the amazingly stylistic DS. I think it took around 12,000 orders on the first day of that year’s Paris Motor Show on the basis of being so different from everything that was available at the time.”

Bill likens the excitement surrounding the C6 with that generated by the Citroën DS, which, to emphasise its impact, was also known as Déesse, or Goddess, a pun on its initials in French.

The C6 has stylistic, functional, technological and environmental credentials. For a start, Bill says that it offers “a beautiful, supple ride quality that works well with the ergonomics such as the seating”. It also has one of the longest wheelbases in its class from which Citroën has created a roomy, comfortable cabin.

The C6 runs on the company’s self-levelling suspension and the latest generation hrydractive suspension uses electronic control of the springing and, for the first time, damping that constantly adapts to provide balanced comfort and road-holding.

The Citroën C6 is available with a choice of two Euro IV engines: a 155 kW 3.0 litre V6 petrol powerplant or a new 150 kW Twin Turbo 2.7 litre V6 HDi diesel unit. The turbo diesel engine is well suited to the Australian environment, Bill says. “It gives you a huge range on fuel and averages 8.7 litres per 100 kilometres. This is phenomenal. Without naming names for an equivalent car it uses half the consumption. You can drive 900 kilometres on a tank so you can do Alice Spring to Darwin and still cruise at a nice speed and in total comfort.”

Not only is the consumption rate efficient with the turbo diesel engine, the engine is quiet and clean in emissions, Bill says. “People are starting to talk green and climate change. The C6 uses a particulate filter for emissions (according to Citroën this traps and burns the particles produced by the engine) and it has very low emissions per kilometre for its size.“

Safety is another important feature. The Euro NCAP give the C6 a maximum 5-star rating for occupant protection and the first ever maximum 4-star score for pedestrian safety, which Citroën likes to promote as making it arguably the safest car in the world. The latter safety score is due largely to the pioneering fitment of an active bonnet system. Standard on all C6 models, this system automatically pops the bonnet up on pedestrian impact, to create a cushioning effect between the engine and the bonnet.

Other standard fitments include an Anti-locking Braking System (ABS) with Electronic Brakeforce Distribution (EBD) and Emergency Braking Assistance (EBA), stability control with traction control and nine airbags.

Limited production
C6 owners will know they stand out from the crowd partly because so few of the cars are being produced and exported to Australia. “Citroën is only building about 30 to 40 units a day in France,” Bill says. “They want to keep it exclusive. By comparison about 1,200 units of the lower end C3 are built every day.

“The first C6 arrived in Australia last November. With so few units being built the allocation for Australia is 19 cars every three months.”

Whatever the product, however, a focus on customer service is paramount for Bill – something he senses mirrors Buildsoft’s approach. “Jim was someone who could look past the sales process and ask, ‘What am I actually getting?’. There are 30 Citroën outlets Australia-wide and Continental Cars has come up on the national sales ladder as 1, 2 or 3, time and time again.”

As well as having accumulated knowledge of the car, the dealership has a huge support network. “We have three master technicians, the highest level of master technicians in the country,” says Bill. “They are trained here. A guy like Jim doesn’t want to buy a car of that value and then have someone like a 16-year-old apprentice working on it and unfortunately that’s what does happen in some places.

“And that’s the difference. Because we’re a single franchise we’re more focused – and that was all part of Jim’s choice. His decision was based on the support he could see he was going to get from us.”

We welcome your contributions about networking events, useful websites and other sources of information, construction activity, highs and lows, companies and anything that helps to make your job easier.
Leighton Holdings and Brisbane-based developer Devine Ltd entered a joint venture, with Devine selling 40 per cent of the company to Leighton, and Leighton to inject $94.7 million into the residential developer.
Devine will continue to run its high-rise construction business and expects to be bidding for work against Leighton or its other subsidiary builders, Thiess and John Holland. Its interests in commercial and mixed-use development could also throw it into competition with Leighton, but Devine was optimistic that while competing with Leighton for some work, crossing paths will probably lead to more joint venture opportunities than anything else.

Construction Outlook Australia for the 4th quarter 2006 from construction media group BCI (Building and Construction Interchange) Australia reported $46 billion worth of construction projects across all sectors proposed in Australia. Though $5.7 billion less than the 3rd quarter, mainly due to a slowing in civil engineering, this was partly compensated by an increase of $4.5 billion in the community sector and $2.3 billion in the residential segment.

$15.9 billion of proposed projects (34%) were in New South Wales, $12.5 billion (27%) were in Queensland. $4.3 billion (9%) in the ACT, $4.1 billion (9%) in Victoria, $3.7 billion (8%) in Western Australia, $3.5 billion (7%) in South Australia, $2.0 billion (4%) in Tasmania and $0.4 billion (1%) in the Northern Territory. For more go to www.bciaustralia.com

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that commercial building approvals were up 20 per cent in January 2007, with Australian Bureau of Statistics figure showing approvals in non-residential buildings such as offices up almost 60 per cent on a year ago. Dwelling approvals, meanwhile, fell by 0.9 per cent in January.

According to the Housing Industry Association major renovations activity grew 6.9 % in the December quarter, the fourth consecutive increase, to $953 million. Total annual renovations increased during 2006, with many households favouring structural renovations of existing property rather than building a new home because of the high cost of new housing.

Architect – South-East Asian building and construction products and service suppliers, Impact Challenger Exhibition Centre, Bangkok, 1-5 May, www.architectexpo.com, or tel 02 9390 2103

CivEnEx, targeted at construction industries, public works and local government, Institute of Public Works Engineering Australia (NSW division), Sydney Showground, 16-17 May, www.civenex.com, tel 02 9716 7391

Designbuild, Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, 3-6 June, with a Green Building Exhibition Zone and Green Building seminars, www.designbuildexpo.com.au

Queensland safety show, Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre, 19-21 June, www.safetyinaction.net.au,
tel 03 9654 7773