Paving Software

The World Economic Forum predicts a digital future for construction businesses. It said that in the next 10 years, the industry could save an estimated $1.7 trillion by embracing digital technologies.

At Software Advice we see a similar trend, with many small businesses looking to automate processes using a plethora of construction software and technologies.

One such technology is paving software, which helps small paving contractors streamline different construction processes such as cost estimation, proposal generation, time-tracking of field agents and contact management.

However, paving solutions differ in pricing, features and deployment. For instance, how do you choose between cloud-based and on-premise deployment options? The right choice depends on understanding your software budget, having employees with the right IT expertise and asking for custom software.

Businesses should carefully evaluate these key factors when considering to purchase a solution. However, not everyone has the time to do exhaustive research. That's why, we created this buyer's guide to give you a general overview of paving software, its common features and buyer considerations. This will help you identify the right solution.

Here's what we'll cover:

What Is Paving Software?
Common Features of Paving Software
What Type of Buyer Are You?
Key Considerations

What Is Paving Software?

Paving software helps contractors manage different aspects of the construction process. For instance, it can be used to track the time of field workers in multiple locations. They can log in their time and job details from their smartphones, while contractors can use the online dashboards to track the data, create billable hour reports and determine pay.

Tracking employee work hours in TRUE Contractor

Likewise, contractors can use paving software to manage client information, create job quotes, generate invoices, handle project schedules and so on.

 

Common Features of Paving Software

Paving software has a wide range of functionality such as cost estimation, proposal generation, job management and project scheduling. Here are the common features of these solutions:

Document management	Store project data, such as drawings, customer requirements and requests for information (RFIs), in a central location.
Contact management	Track contacts and communications between organizations, customers, subcontractors and suppliers.
Estimation and proposal	Calculate the cost of labor and materials to create professional-looking bid proposals.
Project scheduling	Break down projects into phases to identify constraints and assign tasks to workers based on their availability, location and the work order.
Time tracking	Maintain records of the time employees spend on specific tasks to understand team performance and create billable hour reports.
Accounting	Keep track of payroll for subcontractors and employees, in addition to managing customer receipts, invoices and other expenses.

Besides the above features, most paving software offer mobile solutions that allow employees to manage project documents and record working hours from their smartphones.

In addition, these solutions offer third-party integration with related construction tools such as takeoff software that's useful in building construction plans (drawings or blueprints) to understand a project's requirements for materials and labor.

What Type of Buyer Are You?

Paving software can be used to manage different kinds of projects such as asphalt paving in a construction site, office parking lot paving and residential driveway paving.

Choosing the right tool depends on the kind of projects your organization handles, your software budget and your specific business requirements.

Below are the three common buyer categories of paving software:

• Full-suite buyers: These contractors typically handle large commercial and industrial paving projects. They want advanced functionality to manage their complex requirements. For instance, they want construction estimation functionality to offer built-in integration with third-party cost databases such as RSMeans. This allows large companies to automate cost calculations of different items and materials. They can also eliminate clerical errors when users manually add prices of items to the cost sheet.

• Small business buyers: A contractor who handles small and indiscriminate paving projects doesn't need a full-suite construction solution. Instead, buyers want web-based construction management tools that are affordable and easy to use. Even small business project management software would suffice if they need better visualization of project progress or enhanced productivity for small teams.

• Best-of-breed software buyers: These buyers are trying to solve a specific business challenge with software. What works for them is specialized construction software such as construction accounting solutions, home builder CRM software or field service software. These solutions help them efficiently manage certain processes such as job costing, lead management or work schedules for field agents.

To learn more about such specialized solutions, read our buyer's guide on construction software.

Key Considerations

Making software purchase decisions requires you to consider additional factors than just checking out the features of a tool or knowing your business size. Given below are three top considerations to keep in mind when purchasing paving software.

• Options for deployment: Businesses can use paving software either as on-premise, deployed in their own servers or on the cloud (deployed on the vendor's servers). Usually, small businesses prefer cloud over on-premise as the latter has a hefty upfront license fee, which could push their budget. Cloud-based tools have a subscription-based “pay per month" or “pay per user" models that are more suitable for businesses with a limited software budget.

• Ease of use: Using the software shouldn't be a burden on your employees. That's why, businesses should explore the solution's usability before purchasing one. This means exploring solutions that offer drag-n-drop functionality to simplify file sharing. The tool should also offer visual dashboards and calendars that help in tracking tasks and creating schedules.

• Number of third-party integrations offered: As your business grows, you need an ecosystem of tools. This could include CRM software, project management solutions and ERP software. You will need a solution that allows integrations or open API. For instance, paving contractors should integrate construction bidding software. This allows you to create bid proposals and track interactions with clients, subcontractors and suppliers on a central dashboard.