Two ways construction companies can improve job bidding with telematics

When estimating and bidding jobs, construction companies face challenges like rising fuel and labor costs and tighter profit margins. What’s more, they’re often basing their bids on out-of-date data since material costs fluctuate so rapidly. Fortunately, there’s technology available that makes it easier to more precisely and efficiently estimate costs – and if you’re not using it, you’re at a disadvantage, as your competitors almost certainly are. Here are two ways telematics can improve the job estimating and bidding process, ensuring your company’s bids will be on-target and appealing to prospective customers. 

Better resource planning 

Tracking a fleet with the onboard systems through telematics allows fleets to better understand how an individual machine is performing, whether it’s being fully utilized or if it needs preventative maintenance. After implementing telematics, one construction company customer had better insight into the efficiency of their job site with detailed information comparing dump trucks’ cycle time to individual trucks’ onboard scale systems. Ensuring the job site had optimal utilization – the right number of trucks and type of equipment – provided figures they could use to bid similar jobs in the future. 

Command of cost management

The rapidly changing costs of fuel and materials cause many businesses to lose money at the end of a job due to the inability to accurately estimate costs during bidding. Often times, once companies realize they’ve made errors in calculations, they could be on the hook to make up the difference in cost, reducing or even forfeiting their profits. Telematics provides engineers and contractors with a clear view into cost management needed to control for pricing, to ultimately ensure there will be a profit at the end of construction. 

Tracking expenses like fuel burn and aggregate material use in real-time gives managers the ability to see the amount of cost utilized daily or over a period of time, including how much fuel and materials were used and what they cost, for future profit projections and bid estimating. Maye you have a current job where aggregate materials cost more than expected once delivered. If you were relying on the projected material costs from the bid, your estimates will be off. Real-time insights with technology ensures managers have up to the minute insight into changing costs. In addition, tracking this information electronically and in real-time with technology eliminates paperwork, which often isn’t complete or detailed, and saves managers from having to rely on inaccurate quotes. 

By analyzing data from previous construction projects with GPS tracking, construction companies can improve the bidding process with more accurate estimates, leading to more competitive bids and ending up with a profit after job completion. And the longer a business uses telematics to track all data from previous and current projects, the more refined their bids will become as they improve quoting, and the more profitable they will be. 

Learn more about how GPS tracking makes job bidding more efficient for construction companies.