/ Page 4 - Articles by Dan Taylor

Is there anything more critical to your business than accurate construction cost estimating? Guess right, and you could make a tidy profit on a project. Guess wrong, and you may lose money by overspending on supplies or contractors.

We've all held our breaths as our phone slips out of our hands, waiting to see whether it survives the end-over-end tumble intact. We've seen internet videos of the unboxing of the most recent iPhone, only to watch the purchaser fumble, drop, and smash.

If you're like most hotels, you handle most of your money up front. When you check guests in at the front desk, you take their payment information, charge them for the room, and keep the card on file for incidentals. When their stay is up, you make the final charge and slip the receipt under their door. Finished.

If you're a busy hotel manager worried about satisfying guests, allocating time to research and choose hotel management software that fits your needs may fall by the wayside. Or, you end up just choosing the most popular option in the hotel management world, Opera PMS.

A decade ago, most construction managers didn't bother much with Building Information Modeling (BIM). But since then, BIM has become a major part of the construction industry.

Are you more than just a hotel? I’m not asking if you’re a haunted hotel or the Bates Motel, but do you offer special amenities such as a spa, gift shop, or restaurant?

Mobile applications for construction management have really come a long way. While a flashlight app for inspecting foundations and an iPhone calculator for carpentry still have their uses, software vendors have been moving entire desktop construction management suites into the mobile arena. Some have even skipped the desktop step and launched directly on smartphones and tablets.

If you've spent any amount of time in the construction industry, you've probably come across both computer-aided design (CAD) and building information modeling (BIM). More than half of all construction professionals use BIM for at least some of their projects, and 97% are at least aware of its existence, according to the 2017 National BIM Report from NBS.

When it comes to construction management software, there is no industry-specific document management software that comes close to Aconex. From Capterra’s research on popular construction software, Aconex has over 63,000 customers and over a quarter-million users. The company with the next-highest customer base is RIB MC2, with “just” 15,000 clients.