The other guys offer this, too. (Well, sort of.)
Sales and selections
Present only what's truly available.
You’ve probably figured out by now that everything is linked together in BuildLinks. So when a sales representative and a homebuyer are configuring a home, they are presented with options that ensure that what gets ordered can be built.
Community rules. Plan and elevations choices can be guided by choices already made on adjacent lots.
Selections don’t hold up production. Standards can be automatically assigned to a neighborhood or a home, so what is included in the base price is clearly communicated to the homebuyer. Additionally, the selections for every home are listed in the Design Center with a deadline for choosing upgrades.
Selection groups. Simplify the selections process by creating spec levels using selection groups. Maximize margins with pricing tailored for individual neighborhoods.
Bundles. Finished assemblies and whole house decisions (ie. door knobs) can be made in a single selection.
Neighborhood standards. Ensure consistency throughout a neighborhood and ease the selection setup process.
Favorites. Homebuyers can mark their favorite items and make their final decisions later.
Everyone works from one catalog. Your trade partner contracts automatically update the catalog with the builder’s cost and the homebuyer’s price. This eliminates the need to manually rekey catalog prices and ensures that prices are always right.
Bids and contracts
Completely integrated process
BuildLinks is the only construction management software that integrates bidding, scorecarding and awarding of contracts with scheduling and catalog management.
Ready for bids? Complete bid forms for labor or materials to auto-generate trade partners’ bid forms. Select the names of the trade partners, then send the requests directly to their portals.
The end of pricing errors. Now trade partners can easily enter their own numbers, line by line, directly into the bid requests in their portal. There’s no more squinting to read blurry faxes.
Data-driven comparisons. When the builder receives all the bid responses or the close date arrives, they are arranged side-by-side, ready to be scored and tallied.
Transparency. Route the bid to be approved. The contract sent to the winning trade partner’s portal will include terms, pay cycles and dates. Everyone has access to soft copies.
Construction management
Building homes is a complex process.
Managing a company that builds many homes is even more complex.
That’s why BuildLinks offers a fully integrated, start-to-finish platform that gives a complete 360-degree view of every project, phase and neighborhood. Data is real-time, shared and accessible by all who need it.
BuildLinks replaces the disparate systems many builders rely on.
Driven by a task index
In BuildLinks, tasks are clearly defined in the task index—‘Plumbing Rough’ is never called ‘Rough-in: Plumbing’ on a different lot. With default suggestions and the ability to customize and add tasks, builders develop a consistent nomenclature to use throughout the platform.
Cost codes. Each task is clearly linked to its related cost code, assisting the accounting and purchasing departments.
Selections are tied to task, so take-offs, bids and schedules are always accurate and on time.
Enforce builder standards. Each task can be assigned a checklist that must be completed, setting benchmarks to be consistently applied in any neighborhood.
Business intelligence. Shared task names allow builders to quickly compare cost and time to complete a task across specific lots, trade partners or selections.
Set flexible milestones. Create a baseline of measurements to compare overall construction performance across models, neighborhoods or regions.
Powerful scheduling tools
When you’re scheduling hundreds of trade partners, a small oversight (like forgetting a holiday) can throw off project timelines. BuildLinks captures all the information needed to keep production rolling.
There’s too much to remember. So create work rules specific to each trade partner that include their holidays and what days they work. This will automatically be factored into the start and end date and task scheduling for a lot.
Ordering and delivery are on the schedule. Float order and delivery tasks on the schedule with appropriate lead times.
Modify and reuse schedules. Drag and drop tasks from the task index to create a new schedule. Save it to the library of schedule templates, for the next time you start a lot schedule for that model. Alter a template to fit a selection and save it as a new template for future use.
Delays? No problem. Create a buffering task to put a schedule on temporary hold.
No double-booking. Overlay multiple schedules to resolve a trade partner’s schedule conflict.
Adjust milestones. You can easily apply the changes across all active schedules.
Checklists and punchlists
Complete every task to builder standards.
Quality assurance. Tie comprehensive checklists to each task that can be pulled into a schedule.
Do it right, the first time. Require that all checklist items be completed before a task can be marked complete.
Auto-generated punchlists. Incomplete items from the checklist are rolled into a punchlist that is viewable on the trade partner portal.
They’re reusable. Store your set of checklists in the library so they’re easy to add to any task or use across multiple lot schedules.
Financials
With BuildLinks, you’re always on top of your actual costs, budget and variance, because everything is tracked by activity, subcontractor, construction manager, vendor, plan and lot file.
Trade partner management
BuildLinks maintains the information you need about each trade partner.
General information. Data fields capture comprehensive information about each trade partner.
How much they can handle. Set a maximum number of tasks per day for trade partners. The system will notify you when a trade partner is overbooked.
Know the full story. See scorecard reports that include work quality, callbacks, speed and suspensions.
No more expired insurance. Validate a trade partner’s insurance against their scheduled work—before the job begins.
Pinpoint problems. Easily cross-reference recurring jobsite issues based on model, location, material or responsible trade partner.
Suspensions. Quickly suspend a trade partner so he can’t be assigned to a job. Replace him with a new trade partner, lot by lot.
Find and replace. See every lot a trade partner has ever worked on, or see only current lots. Quickly reassign a trade partner’s workload.
Collaboration
The info you need, the way you need it
BuildLinks delivers information using custom, role-based portals. Here’s why.
Perspectives that make sense. Finance sees the process through cost codes, cash flow and profit margins. Sales sees approved plans, options, lot releases and premiums. Operation manages the bricks, sticks, schedule and the people who get the job done. Each of our portals uses the language and focuses on the content important to these different perspectives.
Filtered information. Too much information is confusing, overwhelming or worse. So each portal includes just the data that’s relevant to the user.
Print on-demand. From contracts to schedules, punchlists to bid requests, they’ll find what they need in their portals. And if they need a paper copy, it’s available to print any time.
Better communication
Don’t lose track of vital information with misplaced faxes and emails trapped in someone else’s inbox. BuildLinks provides a forum where all conversations and communications are organized by lot and accessible to everyone who needs to see it.
Messages are bound to a specific lot. The builder can see all the messages, but the home buyer and trade partners can’t see each other. Both communicate with the builder.
Threaded conversations. Messages are sorted by topic, so it’s easy to find what you’re looking for.
Documentation. BuildLinks documents the process from beginning to end. Change order addenda, selections reports, and documents exchanged through the forum are all kept in the lot file for ease of use and future reference.
Announcements
Builders can use the announcements feature to broadcast messages straight to the portals of a chosen group. So it’s easy to send a note to your HVAC contractors or all your trade partners.