Tilbury Douglas Uses ConQuest in The Cloud to Streamline Estimating and Subcontractor Enquiries
Access ConQuest Estimating software helped Tilbury Douglas transition from local server-based to cloud-based operations, reducing risk and streamlining its estimating, cost planning, takeoff and subcontractor bidding processes.
Business size
Large
Industry
Construction, Infrastructure and Engineering
Product
Access ConQuest
Challenge
- With a company-wide focus to migrate all systems to cloud-based hosting, Tilbury Douglas required its existing ConQuest software, previously hosted on regional servers, to be transitioned seamlessly onto the cloud with no disruption.
Approach
- Tilbury Douglas worked with Access Group and ConQuest’s teams to perform a smooth transition over to cloud-hosted software, including its estimating, subcontractor, bid management, 2D takeoff and cost planning functionalities.
Results
- Since the migration, Tilbury Douglas now has over 50 nationwide users active on the ConQuest platform daily. Backed up by the outstanding technical support team at Access Construction, Tilbury Douglas has a robust estimating solution they can trust.
Tilbury Douglas is one of the UK’s largest building, infrastructure, engineering and fit-out companies.
Delivering vital projects across a range of sectors including health, education, highways, justice, defence and water, Tilbury Douglas has built a strong reputation for experienced project management and delivery.
With nearly 140 years of experience in the construction and engineering sectors, Tilbury Douglas needed a robust construction estimating software that would grow with the success of the business and support its migration to cloud-based processes.
Tilbury Douglas had been using ConQuest for over five years, hosted on regional servers, when its Cloud initiative began. It was important to the business that the software it had been successfully using could accommodate a seamless transition over to cloud hosting.
A Seamless Cloud Transition With Access ConQuest
In 2020, Tilbury Douglas made the choice to redefine its internal systems and move away from local hosting. After using Access ConQuest for five years on regional servers, the IT and Estimating teams at Tilbury Douglas and ConQuest discussed the best course of action for this large migration.
The key objectives throughout this migration were to ensure a seamless transition which minimised any downtime within the business, alongside safeguarding all its current estimating and cost planning data, together with both its Regional Building and Infrastructure libraries, establishing a safer and more secure system with national visibility on all bids for selected Tilbury Douglas staff.
Following an event in 2020, Tilbury Douglas lost temporary access to its regional servers’ functionality which threatened to disrupt its ability to access the ConQuest estimating software, the 2D take off software and Online Subcontractor enquiries. As a result, the technical support team at Access Construction navigated a short-term solution by arranging individual licenses for each critical member of the team stored locally on their (C:) Drives. This swift intervention allowed Tilbury Douglas to continue to operate and assured the company that moving to cloud-based processes was the right decision.
This transition began with preliminary conversations on the set-up of Tilbury Douglas’ processes, to navigate a seamless transition which would not impact the business, ensuring work winning and estimating continued without any disruption.
...We also had our IT security, Procurement and Business Management teams carry out full due diligence with The Access Group to clarify and agree any potential downtimes, recovery times, server locations and IT security essentials
Phil Mauer, Director of UK Building Estimating and Cost Planning, Tilbury Douglas
The teams then coordinated their efforts to ensure the essential functional sites were set up on the Access Workspace site, ensuring access to ConQuest could be obtained via the appropriate business unit, including the appropriate permissions, restriction of data access, security parameters, and allowing where necessary, team-wide visibility on projects in real-time.
How Cloud-Based Remote Access Helped Tilbury Douglas’ Estimating Teams
Tilbury Douglas worked alongside Access Construction’s technical support team to help with both the licensing and security of the new system, to ensure each user only had the visibility and permissions required on their individual projects within their own business units.
It was essential that the business had control over managing access to the ConQuest bids to safeguard cost data and our clients. The cloud-based ConQuest system ensured that Managing Estimators across the business had access to projects their estimating staff were working on. Ability to have an oversight of the pricing and progress in real-time. which also helped on large-scale projects where more than one estimator is required, allowing them to work on large tenders concurrently with minimal delays in communication.
For estimating and cost planning in Tilbury Douglas, it is critical that software platforms allow employees to capture tender data across the whole business unit. This data can then be used for benchmarking purposes, something which was difficult on the previous regional server-hosted system.
Approved estimating and cost planning staff have full access to all the companies' projects past and present on the ConQuest Estimating platform, allowing us to capture tender data for benchmarking purposes. On the previous version, when we were on (C:) Drives, whilst possible it was an additional administration task to zip and unzip emailed versions.
Phil Mauer, Director of UK Building Estimating and Cost Planning, Tilbury Douglas
Streamlining Online Enquiries With Access ConQuest
ConQuest’s cloud-based ‘Online Enquiries’ system streamlines the way businesses send enquiries to subcontractors and manage bids. Through just a few clicks, companies can now create multiple trade bills and enquiry letters for an entire project, no matter the size.
The system, which is part of ConQuest’s Construction Estimating software, allows users to easily create subcontractor/supplier document packages, store them on the cloud and send notification emails. Crucially, for companies like Tilbury Douglas, live-tracking allows them to see which subcontractors and suppliers have viewed, downloaded and priced subcontractor tender enquiries, thus saving them time chasing up quotations and additional time managing the supply chains
With an ongoing series of updates and feature releases, Tilbury Douglas is now able to use the Online Enquiries module to attain better quality KPIs, indicating who they are sending enquiries to historically and identifying how often material suppliers and sub-contractors respond.
This reduces time managing its supply chain and helps Tilbury Douglas build up its own preferred subcontractor databases of trusted contractors which can be used throughout its portfolio of projects.
With recent changes in government legislation, it’s now more important than ever to be able to easily control, store and provide evidence of project information. The criteria for businesses to prove and show “The Golden Thread” has been a positive transition for Tilbury Douglas, as ConQuest can store all the relevant bid and enquiry information.
Since the transition to the cloud-hosted version of Access ConQuest, Tilbury Douglas has seen a huge improvement in how easily it can navigate the online enquiries process, access bid and pricing information, which helps with data capture and cost planning. The system minimises risk by providing the team with a robust estimating platform they can trust, and the data it provides ensures they are always partnering with reputable contractors on their approved SC databases.
Online Enquiries... an excellent system to use and, probably one of the best aspects of Access ConQuest.
Phil Mauer, Director of UK Building Estimating and Cost Planning, Tilbury Douglas
