Integrated capital program & project management software
4.4/5 (274 reviews)Good financial reporting on projects and status of where things sit with what actor. Hold accountability with PMs, Directors, and Executive Directors. Very good auditing tool that can help score performance on internal staff and outside consultants or contractors.
Pros
Easy to build reports and dashboards.
Building customized reports and workflows.
Easy to use system.
Allows everything to tie back to a project, include cost, budget, documents, forms, invoices, change orders, task orders, etc.
Cons
System runs slow around noon-3pm EST.
As an EB Admin, certain functionalities when creating forms are uneditable or would require you to remove a field and start over again.
Dashboards do not quickly refresh with up to date changes made in processes or reports. Sometimes it takes almost 6hrs to refresh a dashboard based on new changes.
Would like to see more online youtube training videos on certain modules (i.e., BI Reports, Schedule, Cashflows, etc.)
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 9/10
Pros
+Extremely customisable. This is construction management software that you can tailor to fit the needs of your project. I've used e-Builder for three (3) different higher education institutions and each University is able to tailor e-Builder to fit the project's needs.
+Notifications. E-Builder will email you a notification when you have a RFI to respond to, when you have a submittal to review, when you've been copied on a RFI response, etc. This is very helpful and allows you to notify multiple individuals at once through the software. It also keeps a record.
+Documentation. E-Builder is meant to store documentation and it does excel in this. I've used e-Builder to access submittals, RFIs, drawing revisions, etc. on long term projects (24-36 month construction) when sometimes the documentation was uploaded years back. E-Builder does not put a time limit on an upload, so you can always access it.
Cons
-Training is definitely required to use e-Builder. It can be confusing with different terminologies used such as "forms", "processes", etc. I just need to find submittals and RFIs but can easily get lost. Without training, it is easy to hate e-Builder, just like I did in the beginning.
-Cost - this is not a cheap software and licenses can be costly.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 5/10
I would really encourage you to think this out. E-builder is a gimmick, and a waste of time and money.
Pros
I do not like anything about this product. E-builder attempts to solve a problem that never existed, which in turn only creates problems. I receive on average 50 email per day from e-builder, and 99% of them do not apply to me. Therefore my email inbox was getting flooded with emails, and made it difficult to find what I was looking for. I then created an outlook folder for the e-builder emails so they stay out of my inbox. Now I have problem that I do not receive notifications when the emails come through, and I cannot view those emails from my iPhone, because they are in a different outlook folder.
Cons
The RFI/Change Order/Billing process used to be easy prior to using e-builder. E-builder has created a number of processes and steps that have to be completed by people on each side before it can get advanced to the next level. These processes used to be as easy as sending an email to the right individual. Now if a certain individual in e-builder drops the ball, it holds up the whole process. On average (a small business) the Port has been paying us a month late every month because of the problems with e-builder.
Rating breakdown
Pros
e-Builder is a great product for owners who manage large capital budgets with many projects. The cost module interfaces with out GL system so there is no duplicate entry into a capital software. This means increased financial controls but it's great to have all of the information in one place. The e-Builder development team is great at responding to client suggestions and they are continually upgrading the system to make it a powerful tool that is extremely user-friendly.
Cons
Granting permissions in the folders is cumbersome if management likes continual change. We have a director who is constantly wanting changes and permission changes are not the easiest to make when you have a large folder structure built with subfolders like in Windows. It would be nice to be able to grant separate permissions for specific tasks but the permissions are set for groups of items. It makes sense but also limits the permissions the system administrator can grant to others.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 10/10
Organization of internal documents has immensely improved in our office. The ability to control the document management has been helpful with a large office and lots of archives. The other more robust and/or complicated features have been a struggle to get the office into. Unfamiliarity with the program has been a difficult hump to get over.
Pros
the ability to setup controls on functions so that organization and consistency can be maintained. The forms section is great. The fact that it keeps documents and conversation all in one place. It's nice that it can be placed in one persons court to know who needs to take action. It's also very helpful to manage workloads with employees.
Cons
Implementation of the program to our office has been difficult. It's difficult to fit in the time to understand the program ourselves then train others how to use it. The opportunities are endless when it comes to building processes, forms etc. but the time to build them is tough to find. We could have benefited more from training from an e-Builder team but did not have the funds to purchase it.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 7/10