H&J Martin pricing with ConQuest

For 170 years, H&J Martin have played a part in the creation of many landmark buildings. Starting in Ireland, transforming the cities and landscapes they now build, fit out and develop offices, shopping centres, houses and municipal buildings all over the UK, Ireland & Europe.

Mark Ogle has been a Senior Estimator at H&J Martin Ltd for the last nine years and during that time, the estimating team have used ConQuest to price a huge range of projects; from fit out jobs worth between £5 and £10 million through to new build construction projects up to £50 million. Mark has even priced specialised refurbishments of listed buildings using ConQuest Estimating Software.

We asked Mark what he liked about the system: “ConQuest is great in the sense that you can clearly demonstrate how your costs are made up, whether this be internally or with clients, it is really easy to see and adjust what you are looking at and make changes wherever you need to.

“Being able to resource the job into work packages helps. We can mark up bill items as we are creating them from the ConQuest library and then ConQuest will automatically create the packages. When the quotes come back, you can quickly insert them into ConQuest Comparisons and everything is all already set up for you.”

We discussed the full life cycle of a construction project and just how big a role ConQuest plays. It starts with the drawings and specification documents, as these can be accessed in nearly any format directly within the estimating system itself. You can have CAD drawings, photos, PDFs all open next to your specification and all your rates from ConQuest ready to go without ever leaving the estimating system.

Once the job has been priced, ConQuest can be used to send enquiries, within the buying department and for surveyors, planning and accounts.

“A lot of the business has access to ConQuest here which really makes our lives easier. I still get the surveyors knocking on my door sometimes but once I have done the enquiry via the ConQuest Cloud, the surveyors and buyers can all pick that up.”

“I like how I can track each enquiry that I send. I can instantly see who has looked at the enquiry, who is interested in the project and who is not. The tracking system makes it easy to filter out and quickly contact the suppliers I want to contact.”

H&J Martin use ConQuest from the moment the job comes into estimating, for pricing, take offs, measuring and sending out subcontractor enquiries and comparing them. ConQuest is clearly more than just an estimating tool. Mark explains that ConQuest works really well in contract meetings to add adjustments and tweak discounts and rates for clients. The buyers use it to obtain exact material requirements and quotes from suppliers and finally, everything is passed to the surveyors when the job goes live.

Many ConQuest users go even further as they can allocate every resource in the ConQuest library a cost code. This cost code is mirrored in their costing/accounts software and every time a job is priced, it is automatically done so under these headings, with no extra effort.

In fact the system is so versatile, with a few clicks you can get a complete Cost Value Reconciliation and highlight where you are making and losing money in a project.