Progress Builders, a San Jose, California-based company offers a variety of services to ease construction projects and has just announced the release of new application, available on iOS software devices. The company focuses primarily on building custom homes and has a vast portfolio, including many projects with the environmental “Go-Green” mentality. Their new application, The Concrete Foundation Estimator, is designed to speed up the process in finding the ideal contractor for a consumer’s needs by estimating the best cost as accurately as possible. The application covers all necessary aspects when choosing a contractor, and ranges in services from demolition of concrete slabs, to the entire process in building a custom designed home.
This new application not only allows users to filter through contractors, it also allows them to build profiles and create a project portfolio to keep track of everything they are working towards. The application is designed to help consumers with a full range of needs, whether it is one project or 50 projects at once. Consumers can use the new technology to generate estimates and quotes, but also select exactly what services are needed including the hours of time estimated to be spent and the number of workers necessary to get the job done. This software will be cutting the labour cost of generating these financials, and facilitating the transfer of data more efficiently. Ilya Fedulove, the founder of Progress Builders in San Jose, states material and labor costs will need updating periodically, however this is only the first version of the application and future versions will find a way to update these costs automatically.
There is a pattern to be seen with the construction and concrete industries becoming more technologically advanced. Applications to ease business-to-business and consumer-to-business communication are in-demand in almost all current industries. This year, during the World of Concrete tradeshow, the event application was used to promote booth locations and giveaways, as well as announcing special deals in the city of Las Vegas for those exhibiting at the tradeshow. This tactic has been adapted by Concrete Canada and many other tradeshow organizations for concrete products. Dufferin Concrete is another organization that demonstrated the value of mobile application technologies when they launched U-Track, a tracking system to monitor concrete pour deliveries. With this application released early June of 2014, customers can see where their concrete deliveries are using GPS technology, vital information when dealing with perishable concrete mixes.
Giatec Scientific has taken full advantage of the application generation when designing their products. One of the firm’s most popular concrete testing devices is the XCell. The tablet based, corrosion testing tool is used on-site, to test for corrosion potential in reinforced concrete. All the data is gathered on a tablet and easily shared through wireless connection cutting labour costs of analyzing and transferring the data. Giatec has also recently released the Smartbox to the public. The device is compact and wireless, used to monitor electrical resistance and temperature in concrete. The continuous measurements are recorded and sent directly to an android device through a mobile application.
All industries are adapting to the change in business practices through new software and technology, and concrete is following suit. It will be exciting to see what new developments are made to aid the industry’s practices further!
References: PrMac, Progress Builders
