TrustRadius Insights for HCSS are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Availability of 24/7 technical help: Users appreciate the fact that HCSS provides round-the-clock technical support for any issues they encounter. Many reviewers have mentioned that this availability has been invaluable to them, allowing them to get immediate assistance whenever they need it.
Highly knowledgeable and prompt technical support staff: The technical support team at HCSS is highly regarded by users. They are praised for their expertise and ability to solve problems quickly over the phone. Several reviewers have mentioned that they were impressed with how knowledgeable and efficient the support staff was in resolving their issues.
Thorough training provided by HCSS: Users value the comprehensive training offered by HCSS, as it helps them maximize the benefits of using their products. Many reviewers have mentioned that the training sessions provided by HCSS have been instrumental in helping them understand and effectively use the software.
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HCSS Reviews
17 Reviews
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HCSS is mainly used by our production/operations department with HCSS Heavy Job and HCSS Dispatcher and our estimating department with Heavy Bid. It is a great tool in the field for capturing progress quantities and daily time cards. It has been extremely easy to use in the field which has, in turn, made it very easy to adopt by many as it takes little effort to master.
Pros
HCSS support is amazing. Call any time and you will speak to someone in Texas.
Daily snapshots of what happened are easily documented and can reported on.
Cons
HCSS is very expensive and can be hard to justify at times.
Likelihood to Recommend
The HCSS support structure is truly topnotch. Any time we have an issue and give them a call they are right on it. Between the response time to the time, the problem or situation is fixed, in most cases, it is usually the same day. They are great at helping you with the problem but also take the time to explain the problem, why it happened, and what the correction is/needs to be.
HCSS is being used in our Earthwork/Utility division as our bidding and project management software. Heavybid allows for consistent bidding while allowing us to pull bids together quickly. Heavyjob is being used for electronic time cards, quantity tracking, and labor/equipment tracking.
Pros
Customer support.
Easy to use.
Cons
I can't think of any!
Likelihood to Recommend
HCSS is great for bidding projects from $500 to $20,000,000 (these are the typical size of projects we bid on). It allows for multiple users to bid on the project at the same time, so if you have multiple estimators, it's perfect for that.
I work for a concrete subcontractor and we utilize both Heavy Job Mobile and Desktop versions. We use it for our mobile timecards, productivity tracking, dispatching, safety documentation and inspection management as well as training logging. With the exception of our accounting department, the rest of the company directly uses HCSS modules on a daily basis, including all field management personnel.
Pros
The modules integrate well with each other which makes information sharing easy.
The mobile application works well and has enough back-end customization to be useful to any type of construction company.
The mobile platform is clean and easy to navigate.
Cons
Document storage is a huge thing they need to address. Similar to how a Google drive functions, they need to create a built-in way to attach and store project documents.
The Extra Work Tag documentation in the mobile field application could use a lot of improvements from sequentially being numbered in some fashion, as well as multiple signature lines for both the General and the Subcontractor representatives.
Likelihood to Recommend
The training staff is helpful and I feel would be able to teach this program to any company and help implement.
Th platform is robust enough for the management team, however simply enough for our employees in the field to be able to use.
E360/Fueler Plus is mostly used by the equipment department. We now are using the mobile app that operators can notify my shop foreman about issues on the equipment he is running. It addresses scheduled PM service alerts and tracks all repairs and costs to each equipment. This is all done electronically now rather than paper and file folders.
Pros
E360 tracks cost and time for repairs.
Fueler Plus tracks dispersement of fuel (gallons to each equipment) and cost of fuel.
Simple to use once you get used to it.
Cons
When setting up equipment/vehicles the license plate or EIN are on another screen and not on the General tab. This total doesn't make any sense.
Fueler Plus time card is a joke. It shouldn't even be called a time card, because it doesn't function as one. It's more of a fuel time log.
There is no type of user manual for these products. Even a simple flow chart would work. I'm not a techy person, so I like visual stuff.
At implementaion everything is going so fast that I missed a lot of technical important stuff. No disrespect to the implementor, but it felt like because they have done this a million times, we should already know this. I believe this is where hand outs are very important. One example was setting up PM's. I don't recall them saying that I would have to initialize each one for each eauipment.
Likelihood to Recommend
Once set up properly, I believe it's a great way to track cost and fuel usage.
HCSS is primarily used at our organization by our Underground group. The primary product we use is HeavyBid for estimating new projects as well as large change orders on existing projects. While we have licensing for both HeavyJob and Dispatcher also we have not had much success utilizing them to their full potential due to internal company issues. Overall HCSS provides a robust project management solution allowing for the information to flow freely from the estimators to the project teams.
Pros
HeavyBid integrates well with our accounting system and has reduced my budget development time significantly from our previous software.
HeavyJob's ability to capture field information from a mobile device is key to future success in the industry. There are several other platforms which provide the ability to capture field data but to date I have yet to find one as robust and user friendly.
HCCS's customer service is the cornerstone of my continued support of the software. I have contacted them several times after hours only to be greeted by a knowledgeable PERSON. The ability to converse with someone who knows the product and how to resolve issues without being on hold or speaking to a computer is invaluable.
Cons
HeavyJob is not envisioned to be an accounting system by the developers. Eventually more auditing capabilities will be needed.
Custom reports are expensive.
Likelihood to Recommend
HCSS is a flexible system and can be suited to nearly any need. The largest problem I have found is that many users don't know what they want at first and it is fairly cumbersome to change some of the key components the further down the implementation process goes.
Our foremen currently use the Field System to create and send timecards. We will begin our testing phase to transition to mobile devices in the near future. Our Office Managers are the final approval level for timecards sent in by the foremen. They track attendance to manage paid and unpaid time off from work. Engineers and Superintendents use the Manager System to review and approve the first two approval levels. They review labor hours, cost codes, quantities and equipment codes and hours. They use the Production Analysis and Planner as well as other reports available in the Manager System.
We recently upgraded to 2016, and we have had a few kinks that we are working through, with HCSS. Overall, I feel the upgrade went well with a lot of work from HCSS and our team. Our company uses Specialty Jobs which is a complex element to manage.
Pros
HCSS has established a team to assist our Company with any issue that arises. They respond timely and give us quality service.
HCSS works to accommodate our need in using Specialty Jobs, which tend to complicate our use of the product.
HCSS has created a very good process flow for Project Jobs with their product.
Cons
Some of the reports contain just the Foremen employee number, it would be great if they also contain the name.
Some of the reports are not compatible with running them in Excel, it would be great to be able to dump the data into an Excel spreadsheet.
I would like to be able to run User Accounts into an Excel spreadsheet.
HCSS products are being used at almost every level of our company. Project managers are using Heavy Bid. Foreman are using Heavy Job to report time and quantities. The Scheduling group is using Dispatcher to schedule and move equipment, Heavy Job to follow up on production and quantities on certain projects and GPS on all rolling stock. The repair shop is using Equipment 360. Dispatcher is a tool I would no longer want to be without. The advantages it gives me from an organizational stand point are tremendous. I can quickly see where are of my equipment is or has been, what resources I have available and where they are located.
Pros
Dispatcher's history function is of great use. The ability to quickly know what job and what crew used a certain piece of equipment is very useful.
Dispatcher's ability to transfer information from one user to the next to reports for end users saves a lot of time and confusion.
The amount of time and money that is saved by our lowboy drivers is huge because of the ability to located the piece using the GPS units
Cons
In Dispatcher you should be able to make adjustment (date, time, equipment, notes) to scheduled equipment after it has been assigned to driver in dispatch screen
In Dispatcher you should be able to select multiple pieces of equipment to modify in dispatch window
Dispatch screen in Dispatcher would be better if displayed horizontally instead of vertical
Likelihood to Recommend
Our operation uses several pieces of what we call specialty equipment (not used every day on every job). The foreman when finished will give a location of where this equipment is left, this many times can be very vague and lead to a lowboy driver trying to block around to find the piece or driving down a street he cannot get turned around in. With the GPS devices, the driver can pinpoint exactly where the unit is and if he has room to turn around at that location.
We use the heavybid product in 4 of 5 company subsidiaries. It is used for estimating bids, preparing budgets and preparing change orders. It helps bring consistency to our estimates and budgets and when set up properly and used by trained individuals is faster than any other methods. It also helps as a bridge between different subsidiaries.
Pros
Consistency is huge. Work activities can be set up and used easily. This makes for a better work product and can be reviewed by senior staff quickly.
Heavybid is recognized as a leader in the electronic estimating field. Because of this the Heavybid product is ahead of the curve when it comes to electronic bidding.
The HCSS support team is one of the best. I can always count on talking to a real person immediately that knows how to help me.
Cons
Everyone would like to have a custom system that meets their exact needs, but that's not realistic. So there are a few things that I as an individual would do differently, in that sense the system is not exactly like I would like it.
Occasionally there are missteps. A feature might be rushed into the product and has to be walked back. Also a feature might work well from a programming point of view, but not so well from a constructors view.
Likelihood to Recommend
In the heavy civil arena, they are top of the line. A vertical contractor may struggle a bit to adapt the programs but I think this can be overcome with some adaptation by the contractor. An engineer or owner trying to use the program will have a difficult time, unless they have a contractor's background.
We are a general contractor doing earthwork, utilities ( dry, water, sewer, storm ), gravel and asphalt placement. We do private, municipal, federal and state highway construction. We use HeavyBid for all of our cost estimating for our bids.
Pros
Ability to download project bid items from Excel and State DOT sites to eliminate manual entry.
Ability to set up crews and activities through Bid Item Codebooks and Library Estimates that reference bid items upon import from DOT sites which allows you to automatically build the framework of a bid upon import allowing great time savings as opposed to building the same work from scratch.
Cons
Quote Request system is still cumbersome
Likelihood to Recommend
Their customer support and desire to implement changes / upgrades requested by the customer is outstanding!!
