Kinsley Case study
From Parallel Estimating Silos to an Integrated Construction Estimating Machine
When Kinsley contacted Eos Group in 2017, they were seeking solutions to several challenges facing the company’s estimating department.
The first challenge was knowledge management. The company’s leadership team wanted a scalable project history system to support their preconstruction conceptual estimating and historical benchmarking processes.
The second challenge was to organize and manage their estimating processes more efficiently. Estimators were entering the same data in both Viewpoint and Sage Estimating, increasing the risk of entry errors and wasting valuable time.
And finally, Kinsley wanted comprehensive, staff-wide training so they could fully embrace the new process solutions and optimize their use of the Sage Estimating platform.
A Little Navigation Goes a Long Way
Eos introduced Kinsley to Eos Navigator, Eos Group’s next generation estimate management system, along with Eos Cortex.
Through a series of detailed workshops and targeted challenge and solution pairing processes, Eos and the Kinsley team determined that Eos Navigator and Eos Cortex would jointly address Kinsley’s management, integration, and workflow efficiency issues. While the estimating workflow would continue to start and end in Viewpoint, as it had before, the new integrated process would leverage Eos Navigator to create bi-directional integration between the Viewpoint and Sage Estimating platforms. Select historical estimates that had previously slipped through the cracks would be published in Eos Cortex.
What's the New Workflow?
The estimator initiates the project in Viewpoint. This sends a message to Eos Navigator, which converts the Viewpoint data into an Eos Navigator project with estimates using structured Sage Estimating estimate templates. In Eos Navigator, the user provides additional information and then begins working in Sage Estimating. When the estimate is complete, the project, along with its estimate data, is sent back to Viewpoint and logged in Eos Cortex. The entire team can access all of the job records, projects, and estimates through the cloud, which means manual, Microsoft Excel-based data exchanges are no longer required.
Eos Group assisted Kinsley with:
- Upgrading Sage Estimating from Pervasive to the current version of Sage Estimating SQL. Eos Group collaborated with Kinsley’s IT department to successfully deploy the solution in Kinsley’s data center.
- Implementing Eos Navigator. Eos worked with the senior estimators to configure, optimize, and integrate Eos Navigator to meet Kinsley’s needs.
- Implementing Eos Cortex. Eos provided step-by-step guidance to set up Eos Cortex, as well as deploy the solution in Kinsley’s data center.
What Does Estimating Look Like at Kinsley Today?
Today, when you talk with anyone at Kinsley you understand that estimating is a seamless, integrated process—critical for developing consistent and predictable outcomes during the preconstruction phase, while also establishing a strong foundation for construction-phase success.
I’m really enjoying estimating in a new way here at Kinsley. I personally believe tools like Navigator and Cortex will play a valuable role in providing the market with a higher quality pre-construction experience for a long time to come.”
Better Automation + More Information = Expanded Impact
Eos’s work with Kinsley demonstrates how incorporating automation and systematic processes not only improves operational efficiencies within the estimating process but also leads to effective knowledge management. Through partnerships like these, the work of large general contracting firms can be optimized by applying a process-focused perspective to leverage the estimating division well above and beyond isolated, individual workflows.
