A large construction company with offices and projects spread over the U.S. and Canada needed something easy to use with no limit on number of users and no extra user charges. They wanted their sub-contractors to be able to share project documents with their estimators, make the bid distribution and submittal process run more smoothly, and subsequently make the project managers' jobs easier. FileGenius came through.
"We saved over $25,000 in the first year alone."
Using a simple import feature, the company was able to create more than 1,500 sub-contractor user accounts in minutes — with no additional charges for all of these user accounts. By grouping sub-contractors by discipline and geographic area, they were able to quickly assign the groups to respective workspaces on the site, each workspace representing a different project or an aspect of a project.
In less than two hours they were ready to distribute bid requests and receive submittals from all of their primary sub-contractors.
Especially useful to the firm is the transaction reporting feature. These reports can include almost any record of any type of transaction by any user, within any workspace, for any defined time period. The company found it particularly useful to create and send a report to estimators and project managers once a week that shows which sub-contractors have retrieved which bid packages or files and which ones have submitted their bids.
From time to time, the company purchases additional FileGenius sites to use for dedicated joint ventures and projects, allowing them to brand those sites with partner logos and dedicate usage and content to those individual ventures.
The main site administrator estimates they saved more than $25,000 using the site this way during their first year — in addition to the approximately $10,000 they saved with FileGenius in additional user account charges versus their previous provider. The same solution from another provider was more than three times the cost of FileGenius. Management, he said, is very pleased with the site and the users have commented on how much they like using it.
