The Build Group was named to the Inc. 500 list due to reporting revenue growth of over 2100% from 2007 to 2010. This growth rate places The Build Group at #131 on Inc. magazine's list of top 500 private US firms, and #4 in the Construction industry. Suprisingly, The Build Group's performance also placed the company at #6 for the entire San Francisco Bay Area -- not bad for a construction company located in America's dot com capital!

Fast growing companies need enterprise software that won't slow their growth -- for The Build Group, this means using Procore's web-based construction project management software. With the ability to log on and get up-to-the-minute project information from any Internet connection, Procore makes it possible to keep business information moving. Whether users have a laptop, an iPhone, an Android device, or even an iPad, Procore gets project teams the information they need to keep working -- and, like The Build Group, to keep on growing.

Kevin shares the story of founding DoubleClick, and talks about his no-nonsense business approach. To O'Connor, a great business finds a large problem and solves it. That's what DoubleClick did in Internet advertising. Kevin's latest venture, FindTheBest.com, is solving another problem by enabling and improving online comparisons.

Kevin is backing Procore because he recognizes that our software solves a big problem in the construction industry. The need is simple: construction project teams need immediate access to accurate project information. Information has to be accessible from any device, any place that there's Internet connectivity.

That vision led to Procore's approach to construction project management software. Procore users can access and manage project data using a laptop, an iPhone, an Android device or even an iPad. No matter where a Procore user is, they can keep up with the current information about their construction projects. Problem solved.

Click on the video below to watch Kevin's interview on TechCrunch TV:

Englewood's secret to success? The company has honed its ability to adhere to project schedules and keep projects within budget. Procore construction management software is one of the tools used to get jobs completed on time and under budget.

Englewood Construction has been using Procore project management software for more than four years. Englewood has provided input on the design and functionality of Procore as the software has steadily acquired key features. As Chuck Taylor, Director of Operations at Englewood Construction notes in the article, "Procore's people have worked with us to add functionality that makes Procore even more user friendly."

Taylor also notes that Procore is having an impact on how Englewood operates. "Procore makes our subcontractors be more computer-savvy. Many subcontractors still want drawings and faxes and getting them up to speed is a challenge, but our clients swear by Procore."

"Procore is helping change our construction process. There are no leaps in the schedule if it gets crunched. The Procore system helps us look ahead and identify the bottlenecks," Taylor adds.

All of us at Procore are proud that our construction project management software provides value to our clients -- particularly for those clients who discovered us years ago and have continued to grow with Procore as we add more features and functionality. Congratulations to Englewood Construction for managing to expand and increase its business, even in a challenging market environment!

Click here to download the PDF file of the Contractor's Tool Source article entitled "Survival Strategies" from the July/August 2011 issue.

Procore users can now add a review of our software at buyers' guide site Software Advice.

Construction project management software buyers' guide site Software Advice has added user reviews to its site content. Software Advice provides a great service to the construction industry, and user-generated content will provide even more value to organizations seeking to purchase construction project management software. The people at Software Advice match companies looking for software with vendors selling software. They save people time, money and a lot of hassle. The Software Advice service is free to people shopping for software.

If you're a Procore user who'd like to add some comments about Procore's construction software, click here to visit the comments section for Procore on the Software Advice site.

Some points that you may want to include in your review are:

• Explain what made you look for new construction software
• What did you use before Procore (e.g. a similar system, spreadsheets)?
• When did you buy Procore?
• How'd the implementation go? How long did it take?
• Did your team learn to use Procore quickly? Is Procore easy-to-use?
• How is the Procore's customer support? Have you received the help you need?
• How have you benefited from using Procore? Quantify the benefits, if possible.

Thanks for your input, and we look forward to reading your reviews.

Customer-driven features range from large improvements to smaller "tweaks" made to our construction project management software. For example, during early April our team responded to a customer's request to limit the number of meetings included in the "Old Business" section of his firm's customized Meeting Minutes. The feature was designed, coded, tested and released to the customer within the month.

Other recent improvements affect all users for our tools, and not just one specific client account. An example of this type of recent improvement is in the Bidding emails that are sent out by a contractor to sub-contractors. Formerly, those emails came from "support@procore.com". Project bidders would hit "reply" to answer the email, and would get confused when emails did not get returned to the contractor. Now, all Procore Bidding emailed invitations-to-bid and addendums come from the sender, and not from Procore.

Some Procore enhancements are specialized, but are vital to enabling our customers' business processes. A recent change to Procore's Contract Management tool for construction project managment has enabled Amount Based accounting in addition to the pre-existing Unit/Quantity Based accounting method. When creating a new contract, Procore users can select Amount Based (G702/703) from the Accounting Method dropdown toggle. Contract line items will then contain the following fields: Budget Line Item (if applicable), Cost Code, Description, Funding Source, Type and Amount. All change orders and change order requests tied to the contract will reflect the accounting method that the contract is set to within Procore.

Procore's users also suggest changes to the workflow within Procore's construction project management software, which can cause us to make global changes to how the construction project software manages items such as permissions and routings.

Prior to last month, for example, only Procore company administrators were able to create new projects. Many of our customers requested that their Project Managers be able to create new projects without having to grant them access to the Company Admininstration Tool, or the Company Directory.

The solution that Procore has come up with is to allow users with Portfolio Administrator-level access to add new projects to Procore if that user has the permission setting selected to be added to all new projects. Procore users recognize that this is a simple yet effective solution to the customer request.

Procore's construction project management software keeps getting better, thanks in no small part to our rapidly growing user base. Each month, we add more features and more functionality to what is becoming the construction project management software industry's fastest growing product.

If you're not a Procore user, contact us today at sales@procore.com for a free online demo.

Procore's Support Portal

The portal offers a searchable knowledge base of articles that answer the most common questions we receive about using Procore for construction project management. Registered Procore users can post their own questions, as well as make comments on existing "how-to" articles and questions posted by other users.

The easiest way to find an answer about using Procore's construction management software is to just type a term or phrase in the Search box and click on the "Search" button.

Procore users can also submit a request for support from the portal, using a simple online form. Once submitted, the form goes straight to our Support Team, where it is addressed on a first-come, first-served basis.Your request for help will never get lost among emails or blocked by a spam filter.

After you've submitted a request for support, you'll be able to keep track of the progress made towards a resolution by clicking on the tab labeled "Check Your Exisisting Requests". Plus, automatic email updates will be sent to you whenever the status of your request changes.

The Support Portal provides a place for Procore users to suggest new features they'd like to see included in future releases in order to improve our construction project management software. If another user suggests a feature that you agree is an important one, you can vote the feature up so that Procore knows this is functionality that we should get started on adding as soon as possible.

Procore's Tutorial Videos are also available in the Support Portal, in case you need to learn about a new tool or show someone else in your organization how to use Procore for construction project management.

Neal points to five technologies that contractors are using to bid on and win jobs outside of their local markets:

• Online plan rooms
• Bid management software
• Takeoff and estimating software
• Building Information Modeling (BIM)
• Cloud-based project management software

At Procore, we provide service to many contractors who work nationwide, as well as internationally. In addition to using technology to get new jobs, our clients are finding that using Procore is a great way to standardize business processes across regions, offices and individual projects. Standardized business processes mean that best practices can be made consistent. Another benefit of standardization is that employees can move from project to project without having to learn a whole new style of project management at each job site.

Procore is a project management tool that is available everywhere in the world, wherever there's an Internet connection. We agree with Houston Neal that technology is enabling contractors to move their businesses into new markets. We're also seeing that contractors are using technology to move their best practices into new areas of their companies, no matter where in the world the project site happens to be.

Click here to read Houston Neal's blog post on contractors using technology to find work in other markets.

The Los Angeles Times is publishing a series of articles that reveals how a $5.7 billion program to rebuild L.A. community colleges has produced lots of new construction, much of which is poorly done. The investigation by the Times reporters took place over 18 months, and reveals that tens of millions of dollars were wasted.

The Times examines one project, a new college science center, in today's coverage:

"The Los Angeles Community College District, which paid a contractor more than $48 million to build the science center, had to pay other firms at least $3.5 million more to fix and complete it. The district and the original contractor, FTR International of Irvine, are embroiled in a court fight, with each seeking to recover money from the other."

Hmmmm.

At Procore, we read about cases like these and wonder how much thought was actually given to construction project management, by both the owner and the project team. Did the owner hire a contractor without asking to learn about their project management process? How was the owner expecting to get visibility into the progress of the project?

On the contractor's side, how was the course of construction documented? Is the contractor able to prove that they built the project using all of the correct submittal information? Did the architects on this project promptly respond to RFIs so that the sub-contractors had the necessary information for completing construction? Where are the emails that detail the communication between the project team members?

We don't understand how any owner, or any contractor, can begin a significant construction project without some type of construction project management software in place. It doesn't have to be Procore, although obviously we think Procore is a great choice. But please, if you are in charge of a project as an owner, or starting to build a project as the general contractor, take a look at the construction collaboration and project management software that is available on the market. Don't let your firm end up as the topic of a newspaper investigation.

Click here to read the Los Angeles Times article Billions To Spend (March 1, 2011).

Procore has brought more power to our construction project document management functionality with the addition of sophisticated Check-In/Check-Out functionality. This new feature allows a document to be downloaded from a project archive, and then prevents the downloading of that document for a specified time period.

When a user attempts to download a "checked out" document, they are presented with a message which lets them know that the target document is checked out for whatever time is remaining in the specified time period. The user must let the checkout time period expire before they can download the target document.

The Documents Tool is one of Procore's most-used features. The tool is easy to use, and has powerful features for making it easier to do construction project document management. In addition to the new check-in/check-out feature, Procore's Documents Tool lets you lock folders and individual files, automatically add new version numbers to documents, preview common document types before downloading, and keep a complete download and change log for every document in the archive. With Procore, you can eliminate FTP servers and still share project documents with your whole project team.

Plus, Windows PC users can install Procore for Desktop on their computers and eliminate file uploads and downloads. Procore for Desktop makes it easy to drag and drop files from your computer to Procore, or from Procore to your computer. Avoiding uploads and downloads can improve the ability of construction project team members to manage project documents.

Once your Procore account has had the Check-In / Check-Out feature enabled by Procore, you'll be able to use the functionality on any document you have access to in Procore's Documents Tool. To use the feature, go to the Documents Tool in any Procore project. Select a file from the left-hand side of the page, and look for the box labeled "Check Out File" in the center of the screen. Choose a duration for the check-out and then click on "Check Out".

Procore's construction project management software does a lot more than just document management, but we think our Documents Tool is one of the most robust project document managers available. If you're not a Procore user, contact us today at sales@procore.com for a free online demo.

Procore is proud to announce the release of Procore for Android, a smartphone app for creating, managing and sharing construction project data with Android-powered devices. This app is for all those Procore smartphone owners who have Android phones and need full-featured construction project management software right on those phones.

Procore for Android brings key features of Procore’s web app to Android devices. Users can create, manage and share project information with just a few clicks. All data on Procore for Android is synced in real-time with Procore’s web-based construction project management software.

The first release of Procore for Android offers all of the tools available on our first mobile app, Procore for iPhone. Procore for Android offers document viewing and sharing, photo creation and sharing; punch list item creation and distribution; directory contact access and sharing; time card logging; RFI status review, and daily job log note taking. Procore for Android uses Google Voice to transcribe voice dictation audio into text, resulting in fast voice-to-text transcription.

Screen shots of Procore for Android, as well as tool descriptions, product literature and the Procore for Android User Guide (PDF), are all available on Procore's web site at www.procore.com.

The reaction from Procore's customers to Procore's mobile apps for construction project management has been positive. Construction software review site commented that Procore for iPhone is their "favorite construction app." We anticipate that Procore for Android will receive the same quality of reviews as our iPhone app.

Procore for Android is provided at no additional charge to all Procore registered users, and can be downloaded today from the Android Market.

Click here to learn more about Procore for Android, including how to download.