Since first opening its doors in 1989, the engineering, planning and environmental consulting firm, headquartered in Charlottesville, VA, has expanded to 14 offices located across 12 time zones and a staff of more than 175. Their clients range from private industrial and infrastructure firms to federal agencies with large capital investment requirements and demands, such as the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Departments of Justice, Energy and NASA.
Raymond K. Best, PE, principal in charge of TEC facility asset management and engineering practices, says, "At any given time, we generally have 10 to 15 engineers, estimators and planners working on a given project in half a dozen locations. Our people are necessarily agile, able to pick up and solve a problem anywhere in the world. We require the same from our technology - particularly estimating."
In mid-2006, TEC set out to find a browser-based estimating application that would allow them to access a single database from anywhere in the world - and provide the powerful functionality expected in today's business tools. After evaluating several applications, TEC selected Success Enterprise, a web-based application utilizing SQL and .NET 2.0. Success Enterprise provides all of the basic estimating functionality provided in its client-side sibling, Success Estimator, but adds a multitude of additional features and capabilities that can only be achieved in an enterprise application.
After receiving two days of basic training on the program, Best and his team put the product to work at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort, NC. They used the web-based estimating tools to generate approximately 540 individual maintenance and repair project estimates for more than 50 buildings.
Best says, "Because we produce our estimates from multiple offices, being able to have the team collaborate on the projects at the same time, in real time increased our productivity and reduced the potential for errors. We also had the added benefit of getting accurate, up to date information because everything in the estimates is being updated in real time."
That project was successfully completed in early 2007, and TEC set out to expand the Success Enterprise application throughout the company. Currently, there are more than 10 new projects underway and the team is looking to take advantage of some more advanced capabilities of the program including integration with TECfms, TEC's SQL web-based facility management application.
TEC estimators say that one of the advantages of the Success Enterprise centralized database is the ability to reuse estimate and cost data. As the database grows on every project, TEC estimators around the world will be able to query across all projects to find estimates or individual items based on an unlimited number of user-defined criteria. In the case of TEC, a user can quickly search the database for similar projects ranging from $5,000 to millions of dollars.
The firm is also looking to integrate its estimating database with cost management solutions using Success Enterprise's web service links to create a completely interoperable back office system.
Best concludes, "That is Phase 2 of our vision of a complete web-based, interoperable technology framework. Tools like Success Enterprise provide us the agility to begin work - and then grow as our needs expand."
