RSMeans Data Online Pricing

Organization of the estimating items based on the Masterformat. Comprehensive list of the estimating items. Ability to verify estimates using the crew listing and the crew production rates.

Some estimating items should be available in both the commercial and heavy civil products, but it is only available in the commercial offer.

Ability to line item choose from all RS Means disciplines we subscribe to. Ability to customize our output reports. RS Means have the majority of the systems that we need to provide accurate budgetary estimates.

I administer our RS Means account, but I very, very seldom use it myself. As the account admin, I am forced to be one of the user accounts; therefore, I have to allow staff to log on with my e-mail and password to use the online cost estimating. We have determined that we do not need more than two simultaneous accounts and our preference would be to assign the licenses to who needs them, when they need them. I can do that with the non-admin license, but not with the one assigned to me. I’d prefer not to have staff logging on as me (administrator).

I liked the ease of picking up the software functionality for gathering reasonable quotes for new and renovations to buildings, streets and treatment plants.

At times I found that the software was lacking in overall speed when loading requested search items. I was able to minimize this issue by refining my search request as best I could but for new users attempting to compare all items of a requested search it will slow down RS Means, and you would have to wait until the system loads the various items. This was mainly an issue when I had over 700 results for a single search.

RS Means is extremely helpful in creating conceptual Budgets. It offers me an array of building models to start with and a comprehensive library of assemblies to add, subtract, or change the model to fit the particular building that I am estimating. The end result is a quick and accurate conceptual budget, with a detailed summary of the estimates assumptions. My set sum estimating on projects is also enhanced by allowing me to search RS Means data to compliment our in-house historical data. This virtually eliminates planning bias when pricing items within a project that we do not have historical data for.

I had a little trouble getting knowledgeable feed back from the rep that called for the renewal. I probably should have contacted customer support with my question but I received the renewal call before I had a chance to. The rep was very nice on the phone.

The outline style breakdown helps with finding what you are looking for in a timely manner

The search function is tough to get the wording just right to find what you are looking for

ability to find items, ability to find items

The Purchased Means Database does not work with our PROEST SOFTWARE: - Does not update Quarterly - Inconsistent cost results - Does not allow for Union vs Non-Union pricing - Assemblies are not easily modified, and Units are almost never Industry Standard Units for Assembly

The software is easy to use and has a good details about required man hours for tasks and the pricing of materials and equipment.

It covers only commercial projects and has minimal support for industrial projects.

I appreciate the extensiveness of the cost data library

I wish there was a better way to build/ develop your own assemblies

It is so much easier than the books! You can search but need to narrow it down for speed.

I can't search as fast as I would like and can't customize the export into Excel to match my contract spreadsheet. Also exports into Excel that have certain symbols, do not work

The fact that it is reactive to current costs and I know that the cost I am seeing online is reflective of the current pricing world. I love the assemblies tab and wish that it would grow. I really appreciate the search feature. I like that fact that it is digital and saves me from hauling a book or books around and I believe that most of the time it saves me time versus looking it up in the book.

The search feature is too rigid often only searching one area when there can be multiple terms for the same item. I would love to see the assembly section grow. There are many other tasks that would be an incredible time savings if they were in the assembly section. I would like to see more explanation of what all is included in a line item. explain the processes more thoroughly that help decide one category v another.

The ease of use, the functionality of the online subscription service. The customer support.

Periodically, the system will "mini-crash" causing me to re-enter data for one particular project. Small price to pay for the end result.

Ability to change cities. productivity shown. set out as one would expect for trade format

Some pricing is off. Roofing pricing needs better expansion.

Detail of the data, and ease by which we can pull an estimate together. As an A/E firm on the front end of a lot of projects the first question is usually how much does it cost. RSM consistently hits the mark with the bid results.

- a 80" computer monitor would work best to try to see everything with all the scroll bars - it would be nice to have an A/E fee adder % like we have for markups, instead of adding a % to every line item. The current option makes the math work but makes for a very messy output in reports. - have the Excel report outputs match the appearance of the PDF outputs. The PDF's are super clean but obviously lack any ability to augment or add things like A/E fee %, contingency, etc. We have to hand-edit them, which is fine, but if we change a number then we have to hand-edit everything again.

The content is fairly comprehensive and helps me get a better idea what costs may be for certain tasks or items. It also gives me the ability to see what the costs are through the different regions of the country. That is helpful because we service clients nationwide.

Sometimes I find it clumsy to navigate around. Also it never fits on my screen. I always have to scroll to the right. At times when I'm searching for an item I may have difficulty finding it. Even simple things. The reports are flat out terrible .

Easy to search for the data Many tips available to do the cost estimate (e.g. how to do the quantity take off regarding foundation, spread footing)

RS Means sale various versions - Heavy Construction, Concrete & Masonry, MEP, Commercial renovation Cost. I have all of them and found out only a few added data-base specific to the title, not much worth to pay for. Abbreviation dictionary: It has most of the abbreviation but does not cover all. I have to google from time to time.

Useful line items, and ability to price out how much it installation is.

- Limited in terms of what items you can find and price out. We use this software to price out energy conservation measures and some technologies are just not listed which is a limits how useful it can be on a project to project basis. - Sometimes pricing is not realistic for metropolitan areas. Worked on a project in San Francisco and spoke to someone local that said that the prices were nowhere near what RS Means was saying, they were much higher. - need to create every time i want to put together and export pricing for something small. Sometimes I get small requests for pricing and instead of being able to put a couple of items together, export it and send it out, i have to create a project and then put it together to export.

the 2019 on line service brings up 2nd, 3rd, 4th level data a lot quicker than in the past. I use the production info and modify for projects and the materials costs are extremely helpful. searching from the search bar is quick.

upon opening the divisions are open. when working on a laptop it is harder to close the section. it would be good to have a setup button to determine whether we want that open or not.

The database of materials and labor is second to none in my opinion and I like that the program includes the square foot estimator and life cycle cost tools.

The ease of use when developing estimates and square foot models is lacking, and could use some revisions to allow for more functionality. It would be nice if in the square foot model you could adjust the quantity without having to swap an assembly, and it would be good to also have the ability to delete multiple line items at a time when revising the model to best fit the building application. Additionally,...

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Overall, its interface is user friendly for the most part.

Its several lag on load time when scrolling. That the database lacks almost anything that is specialty or modern technology. Pricing is a joke at best and forces me to struggle with almost every proposal (FYI, I have been using this product since it was just a book). The annual cost increases are always a sticker shock. I understand as a product grows in popularity and comprehensiveness that there is a need for cost increase for the logistics of it alone, but the price increases seem to jump by leaps and bounds. This can be very hard to encumber, especially when used for a contract that is not as lucrative but requires your software.

I like that it has just about everything you would need to price out for all types of construction.

Sometimes as an estimator you use your own template and you use RS-Means as a resource for costs and product descriptions. The software doesn't allow to right click copy and paste text feature so I have to jump through alot of hoops to export the estimate in Means to an Excel report and then copy and paste from there.

Depth of the cost data is impressive. Ability to "modify" and customize into "assemblies" is powerful. Software keeps a "running tab".

Customization seems very proprietary and cumbersome. Experience is required to learn the language and "assignments" of materials to categories and assemblies. Pricing adjustments seem to require being in Excel at which point, that specific work is not "saved" to the program.

This software is the foundation for my entire business offering. It is a highly regarded cost database in almost every industry. The ability to understand impacts of geographic location and timing are unprecedented in the software industry. The full range of the offering by RS means online is a very important standardization across multiple sectors. I highly recommend the software to any company or person that is responsible for cost management activities in their business.

There are no negatives to the software. It takes a while to truly understand how do you manipulate the data sequence but again it is without any constructive defect.

I used the software for maintenance purposes. It shows repair, replacement, and preventative maintenance frequencies of the items, material cost, and manhour need.

sometimes I couldn't find what I need in the maintenance section. The construction section includes lots of items but I can't say the same thing for the maintenance section. Also, in the software, we can see component details of the items (for example, if it is a door repair item, details show change hinges, replace lockset, etc.). However, there is no option to export this information on an excel file. In addition, the units are imperial. A simple converter can be implemented so that people can switch to the metric unit system.

We use RSMeans a lot for the purpose of completing cost reasonableness reviews for change orders and other construction costs. The software works very well for this purpose and we feel like we get reliable data to base our decision making process on.

Sometimes when estimating RSMeans software can be difficult to used simply because materials or assemblies aren't defined in the same way they are commonly referred to in the industry. For instance there should be an assembly for a NFPA 13R fire sprinkler system.

Hello Chris - Thank you for the feedback and sentiments of our customer service team. Regarding the NFPA 13R fire springler system, you can find that system at 21111316 for CPVC Fire Suppression Piping.