Why Smart Heavy Civil Contractors Are Bidding Fewer Jobs and Winning More There is a counterintuitive pattern showing up across the heavy civil industry in 2026. The contractors winning the most work are not the ones bidding on every project that hits their desk. They are the ones saying "no" more often, and it is making them more profitable, not less. This is not guesswork. It is a shift that industry analysts have all identified in their 2026 outlooks. In a market defined b

Determining and applying a proper tax rate is an imperative aspect of running a business. The SharpeSoft Estimator offers multiple different methods by which to determine an appropriate tax rate based on different default criteria. These are tax rates based on Job Owner, a Job Default, or a Company Default. Job Owner Tax Rate As the name implies, the Job Owner Tax Rate is a tax rate associated with a specific owner of a job. Owners are first entered in the Owners table, along

How AI Is Reshaping Heavy Civil Estimating: What Contractors Need to Know in 2026 If you have been in heavy civil construction for any length of time, you have probably heard the buzz about artificial intelligence changing the way contractors estimate and bid projects. And if you are like most estimators, you might be wondering: is this actually real, or just another tech trend that fades in a year? The short answer: it is real, it is here, and it is already reshaping how the

For project management purposes, you can assign WBS Codes for each item in a job bid. Work Breakdown Structure Codes (also known as WBS Codes) are codes related to a specific Work Breakdown Structure; a hierarchical schema used by project managers to help divide projects into manageable deliverable items. Work Breakdown Structures are usually either divided by deliverable-oriented, or phase-oriented projects. This window is used to enter WBS codes based on the metric required

SharpeSoft is proud to be a winner of the Top Performer award from SourceForge, the world’s largest software reviews and comparison website. SharpeSoft is proud to be a winner of the Top Performer award from SourceForge, the world’s largest software reviews and comparison website. 04/29/2026 - SharpeSoft, Inc., the civil construction software company dedicated to putting clients first, announced today that it has been awarded the Spring 2026 Top Performer Award by SourceForge

How to Manage Material Price Volatility in Heavy Civil Estimating If you've bid on a heavy civil project in the last few years, you already know the story: the price you quoted for concrete in January isn't the price you're paying in June. Steel fluctuates with global scrap markets. Asphalt moves with the price of oil. And aggregates, once the most predictable line item on your estimate, are now subject to localized shortages that can spike costs overnight. Material price vol

What Winning Construction Bids Have in Common (And How Estimating Software Helps) Every contractor knows the feeling: you spend days preparing a construction estimate. You double-check the numbers. You submit the bid with confidence. Then the results come back. You lost the project by a few thousand dollars. In heavy civil construction , that scenario happens all the time. The difference between winning and losing a project often comes down to accuracy, speed, and confidence

Better Communication and Easier Documentation: How Heavy Civil Contractors Use SharpeSoft Heavy civil construction isn’t just about dirt, pipe, asphalt, or concrete. It’s about coordination. And when communication breaks down, documentation follows; and margins disappear. If you’ve ever dealt with multiple versions of the same estimate, confusion between field and office numbers, missing backup during a change order dispute, or time wasted searching for the “final” file. You

The SharpeSoft Customer Webinar series is designed to assist SharpeSoft users of all skill levels in getting the most out of the Estimator set in a new collaborative online environment. What to Expect Quality presentations performed by SharpeSoft's knowledgeable Success Team every month, demonstrating only the newest of Estimator releases. Dedicated timeslots throughout the webinar to allow for user-submitted questions and answers. A new perspective on SharpeSoft's powerful f

Boost Construction Productivity: Integrating SharpeSoft with Your Project Workflow Construction productivity doesn’t usually fail because teams work too slowly. It fails because information breaks down between estimating, project management, and the field. An estimate gets approved. A project gets kicked off. And suddenly, the numbers that made the job profitable are buried in spreadsheets, PDFs, or tribal knowledge that never fully makes it to the people executing the work.

The Trench Profiler is an awesome tool capable of creating intricate trench designs with just a few clicks. While the Estimator system allows users to insert new material items into the Trench Profiler, the ability to link these items provides for a stronger basis of understanding costs and measurements associated with the trench. Note : These instructions assume that appropriate bid items to be linked to the trench already exist elsewhere in the job. For more information on