FastPIPE vs. InEight

It's absolutely well suited to anyone needing accurate piping takeoff and laboring estimates, with great reporting and up to date pricing. I love that I didn't need to spend time trying to update the price logs. It's easy to learn, and works well in a large or small environment, and lends itself to more than just estimating, but becomes a good project management tool as well. Fantastic software.

Incentivized

It's definitely a good tool for progress tracking, as well as time tracking. The ability to forecast quantities provide an even better scenario, closer to the reality, supporting even change management. The change management is also a good method, besides the fact of rework if you think in the whole process of issue creation, promoting to PCO, promote to CCO, execute the issue, move to change in controls, and so on... just now I think having all in a single place would minimize the manual work and maybe increase the engagement on it. About a negative point, I'd use a feature that appears to be in all modules. It's pretty much a cosmetic, but it impact in the productivity, a lot. For all fields you will fill with information, whenever your mouse hover over it, a tooltip appears, impeding you to continue, so you have to walk around, click in a place that's not being covered by that tooltip, go back to your keyboard and continue... again, it's a cosmetic, but having this in a Monday, with a full job to plan, claim quantities, and whatever else, it's annoying.

Incentivized

• FastPIPE was very fast to learn, very straight forward and user-friendly. It's easy to use and teach new interns and project engineers how to quickly takeoff sections to backup change orders or assist in heavy bid load.
• It's fantastic at keeping up to date on price changes. I'd get updates often, and they were usually within 2-3% of our discount prices with local vendors. In the few instances it wasn't, FastPIPE was very easy to adjust or factor for project costs.
• Is great at being able to pull up reports and graphs and track different materials and labor costs for factoring. We bid on a lot of high rise residential buildings, so we do takeoff by floor. It would give detailed reports per page as opposed to just a lump sum. Very detailed so it was easy to adjust per our project approach.

Incentivized

• Tagging segments of work.
• User defined views and descriptions for all screens.
• Customizable ribbons to provide an efficient use of the software.
• Multiple layers/dependents to allow for an extreme drill down of the work and the ability to roll up to a more useful level for upper management review.
• You can bid the work as you would build it, in detail.

Incentivized

• It was a trick or two learning how to upload prints correctly, I think that interface could be a bit easier, but it's already better than most of the competition.
• Might be nice to have easier labor factoring, in case we want to pre-load our own instead of MCA time factors for piping labor
• It would auto update upon opening occasionally. It's fairly fast, but I prefer to OK that in case I just need to come up with something quickly and don't want to wait.

Incentivized

• Provide a simpler version (cliff notes) of the knowledge database
• Offer versions of InEight for smaller companies, i.e. less than 20 emplyees, under $5M in revenue
• When an estimate is complete, offer a dialog box to ask if the job was won, lost, or still in progress. We tend to leave most of our estimates in the bidding column. This is a user error, but the prompt would be helpful.

Incentivized

Some features with InEight's TeamBinder are worthy of single use, however the review feature and subsequent revision and version numbering could be improved. We will be aiming to roll out the package to encompass our internal documentation in the near future and will be in a better position to judge the usability after that point in time.

Incentivized

I would give it an 8 out of 10 because the software can be a bit cumbersome to new users. It also takes a long time to set up the library and input all of your companies needs so that the software will provide the level of service required to estimate projects. However, once the software is set up it is a powerful tool. We only use a portion of what the software is capable of delivering

Incentivized

We are new to the use of the system, and so far, we have not reached out for any support. The only support we have requested so far is the development of a training program that involves other staff - some are to learn the use of the program, and some are for informational purposes in understanding the capabilities of InEight.

Incentivized

Since the original inception, I have been required to overhaul the system so that it is more user friendly and combines both aspects of our business, documentation and drawings. Being able to control revision and version numbering has been a key struggle that only staff training has been able to mark this as complete.

Incentivized

I've used the quote soft piping takeoff as well, and it's just not as easy to use or update. Basic methodology and interaface is similar, but it's more 'clunky' to use, is harder to keep updated and to upload PDF's for takeoff, and it's just not as streamlined or user friendly. Akin to comparing driving a truck to a sports car. The Fast Pipe is really smooth and easy to function in.

Incentivized

We looked at HCSS and Bid 2 Win but chose Ineight due to the fact that it seemed more user friendly, plus I had used it at a former company when it was available from the Grantlun Corporation and was very familiar with it in its ease of use and reliability.

Incentivized

InEight is a good system that has scaled nicely as the company has grown. the tools are still readily available and applicable for our larger scope of work. It has kept up with the growth of the company very nicely

Incentivized

• Best impact is time saved. It's so much faster to do bid takeoff and hit the ground running
• Being able to 'draw in' on design-build and being able to print my takeoff has been helpful when turning the job over so the field install understands the approach taken to get the job.
• Ease of use and learning has made it much more cost effective to bring new people up to speed.

Incentivized

• the positive impact is that it has helped us better gauge staffing and staff jobs appropriately
• negative impact is that it takes a lot of time for new users to learn the software
• the positive impact is that many of our clients use it, making collaboration easier with them
• positive impact is that we can see our percent complete easier
• positive impact is that it is easier to share documents to our team internally

Incentivized