Procore

Much better than the competition at managing a range of projects across the things you need in construction
- RFI,s , punch/snag list (we use this for internal "to do" items) and critically the main contract variations- this is a bit clunky but REALLY effective when you get the hang of it
- meetings recording is again a trifle clunky but very effective so I forgive it

For the first time in 15 years I have proper oversight across all projects (typically around 40-60) and can manage the progress of each from my iPad wherever I am.

Site logging app very powerful

Clients love the visibility

Document handling with version control is brilliant

The only really annoying feature is that the company level information (ie visibility across projects, personal "open items" lists and financials) is only available on the browser version not the app.

The directory and permissions systems are well intentioned but actually you have to subvert them a bit as to do anything useful people really need full admin rights (even to add a contact to a directory- if this is to be used as the main shared company contacts directory we need everyone to be able to do that). I am happy to give my people that, but I can imagine a lot of companies where you don't want all your staff to have access to budgets and financials.

It is expensive- we think it a great investment at this time, but it is nonetheless expensive. if you are looking for a cheap app this is not the one for you.

The us-centric language and set up is a minor irritation- the partial attempt at making it Anglophile (changing a few of the function names) is actually worse than useless as the changes just confuse people- the training videos refer to the US terms for things and you can get used to pretty fast, but then they are not called that on your screen.

I would love to be able to customise some of the standard PDF outputs

Drawings handling a bit clunky, particularly markups- brilliant idea and conception but difficult to use as you can't undo markups once you have done them which makes people risk averse in case they cock it up- I am confident this will improve

Procore was able to integrate with our accounting software (SAGE 300) to help reduce duplicate entry.
Procore has a very good user interface and has been adopted well including in the field.
Procore continues to improve the software and integrations to increase the value and usability.

The cost is higher than we would like. Some of the tools are not fully connected to SAGE yet, so the features are not quite as useful. For example subcontractor invoicing is still being connected.

Strong Project Management capability including Contact Management per job, Submittal & RFIs workflows and approvals with ease of communication on mobile devises. Also, syncing with Microsoft Project schedules is a time-saver, and allows views for updated project schedules in calendars. On a customer support level, I did find the live chat very helpful as well as all the Procore tutorials on the various features. I also greatly valued how documents could be uploaded and the system would recognize the drawing page references and label accordingly when saving.

Insufficient as a sole source for accounting services, and does not support information transfers in/out of QuickBooks desktop versions (even with support of Procore connectors). Therefore, accounting team needs to duplicate efforts and manually update prime contracts. Additionally, the accounting module does not really communicate with the project management module so challenged to know as a team what stage project is in, and no easy way to get budget forecasts. Also, navigation around the program was not very logical and user-friendly for many staff members. Lastly, when we experienced a big hurdle with the accounting features, it took months to speak to a support representative who could talk through the issues. Perhaps if Procore would have had a more flexible subscription option, and allow for use of the PM tools without paying for the tools we couldn't implement, we would have wanted to continue our subscription longer.

Admittedly, I fought the use of Procore by my firm for a while. As it became a more prevalent tool used by contractors on my projects on a regular basis I was more or less forced to learn how to use it. In the end, I'm moderately satisfied with the functions that I'm most concerned about as an architect such as tracking RFI's and submittals, creating custom logs and tracking field issues. The bulk of the set up work was performed by the general contractors in each instance as they are using the software for accounting purposes as well. The ability to track drawing changes and updates is also very handy.

While I am still happy to use this software to make the contractor's life easier, it is still a bit cumbersome. The ability to apply multiple sorting fields to RFI's and submittals is a nice feature, but cumbersome to load on the webpage. At times it seems that there are perhaps too many options, especially when trying to create something simple such as a "Open RFI" template to use for meetings. And speaking of meetings, the meeting minute layout within the program is, to put it mildly, garbage. The software is clearly written with the contractor in mind, as if the CA process on the design team side is almost an afterthought. On my most recent project, I had to work with the GC and Procore in order to have the proper RFI and submittal routing established so items don't sit in limbo and become late.