Explore how to use Bluebeam for tracking subcontractor responsibilities and providing a clear overview of who is handling each part of a project. This method not only streamlines the estimation process for general contractors but also ensures transparency in the assignment of tasks to different subcontractors.
Key Insights
- The use of custom columns in Bluebeam can help general contractors track which subcontractor's package of work each takeoff item or specification section falls under.
- By adding a responsible subcontractor column in Bluebeam, general contractors can clear any ambiguity about which subcontractors are given individual tasks for pricing and ensure easy comparison of quotes when they come in.
- With the use of this method, general contractors can easily assign subcontractors to takeoff items in bulk, making it easier to track and review the scope of work each subcontractor is responsible for.
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And another custom column that we are going to review here in Bluebeam, it can be used for tracking subcontractor responsibility, or which subcontractor's package of work each of these different takeoff items or specification sections will fall under. So the process, if you are a general contractor and you are putting together an estimate for a project, you have your internal estimating team do takeoffs and try to come up with a rough understanding of the quantities and the pricing of the projects. But then, since you as the general contractor are not going to be actually performing that work, you still need to go to subcontractors to get pricing and estimates on different scopes of work.
So for example, for our structural concrete section here, my internal estimating team, we have already come up with, okay, here's the total cubic yardage on the project, and we've said that the price figure that we typically see for a per cubic yard cost is $100 per cubic yard. So knowing what the cost is going to be per cubic yard, knowing what our total cubic yards is going to be, that can allow my internal team to get a benchmark on what we think the price should be. As our team has done that, we're also going to be sending this out to a subcontractor for them to price.
And what we're going to do in Bluebeam is we're going to add a responsible subcontractor column so that nobody has any question of which subcontractors we've sent these items out for pricing. When we get all the quotes back in from all the different subcontractors, it's going to be really easy for us to look at each of those quotes and look at our estimate and see, all right, for subcontractor A, here's the 10 line items in my Bluebeam estimate that I should be looking at while reviewing subcontractor A's pricing. So to do that, again, we're going to go into our markups list, and we're going to go into columns, and we are going to hit manage columns.
Again, we're going to click into the custom columns tab here. We are going to add a custom column, and let's just say we're going to call this one responsible, sorry, I can't type today, responsible subcontractor. And the type, this is just going to be a text field here, and we're just going to say okay.
So once we've hit okay, that is going to add in a responsible subcontractor column here. So all the way on the right hand side, we've got responsible subcontractor. We can see that it's currently blank.
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We're going to go in and just start assigning some subcontractors to these takeoff items. So again, we're going to click and hold shift and grab all of these concrete items, and we're going to go to the left hand side of the properties bar, and we're going to go to responsible subcontractor, and we're going to type in Captain Concrete. We're saying that Captain Concrete is going to be the responsible sub for this scope of work.
When we get a quote in from Captain Concrete, we can very easily just come into our estimate here, and we can sort and filter by everything related to Captain Concrete. If we just click all, and we can see, we can click on Captain Concrete. We've sorted by just them, and we'll know that when we have a quote from Captain Concrete, we can just review only this scope of work.
It'll allow us to be focused and make it a lot easier. So let's go ahead and clear that. We could just unfilter from Captain Concrete.
So let's go click on this drop down here, and it looks like we are unfiltered. Let's just go over to the right, or to the left hand side, and hit this specification drop down. And once we hit that, that's going to kind of resort and filter us by spec section.
And we can add another subcontractor to another set of items here. So let's go exterior wood framing, and let's go hardwood base. Those two are both going to be wood items, so we'll have our carpentry subcontractor handle those.
So let's just click on the first one of wood framing, and then let's scroll all the way down to the bottom of hardwood base. We'll hit shift, we'll multi-select, and let's hit a right click here, and then go into properties. I'm sorry about that.
Let me try that again. I'm going to minimize that bar, and I'm going to go to properties again. All right, so when we hit responsible subcontractor here, we can just type in ABC framing, and then hit ENTER.
That's going to be our framing subcontractor that's going to do all of our drywall and wood. And if we pull this markups bar back up, we can see that going all the way over to the right hand side, we can see that ABC framing is our responsible subcontractor. So that's something that could be repeated in bulk throughout the rest of the estimate, and it'll just give us a quick and easy reminder of which subs are going to be responsible for which different items of work on the project.
