SCI Infrastructure Uses SharpeSoft to Continue a Legacy

The Story

Located in the Seattle-Tacoma area, SCI Infrastructure, LLC. has been a mainstay of the area for decades, transforming from a simple operation helmed by brothers Armondo and John Scoccolo, to an incorporated venture providing trusted construction services up and down Washington state. Like the legendary fig tree which graces the company’s property, SCI has grown to become a beloved member of the community.

2821 S 154th St, SeaTac, WA 98188

With the Scoccolo brand celebrating 75 years of operation as of 2026, SharpeSoft sat down with the current CEO of SCI, Mark Scoccolo, to chat about the benefits they’ve seen since implementing SharpeSoft Estimator.

The Challenge

The further we travel into the 21st century, the more common it becomes that solutions which worked in the past no longer hold feasibility. In this sense, SCI is one of many realizing the need for consistent, reliable bidding software that is both easy to use and reasonably priced.

Previous Solutions

“Back in 1999, we had created custom Excel Workbooks that gave us the flexibility we needed, with a roll-up summary feature so we could formulate our bids in a format similar to what most owners requested. Excel, while flexible, was delicate and fragile. One bump with the space bar and you could unknowingly delete a critical formula cell, making the math not totally up correctly.  That happened to us, and we accidentally left over $50,000 out of a bid. That event taught us a lesson. We started looking for a more stable bidding platform, a foolproof package that we could reasonably rely on. SharpeSoft was our choice.”

It is unfortunately a problem rampant across the entire industry. Construction projects incorporate large volumes of data and associated costs, even for relatively small jobs. Mistakes are potentially devastating, with a study released in 2021 by Autodesk and FMI Consulting estimates that bad data management resulted in a loss of $1.8 trillion worldwide in 2020.

While the pandemic is no longer an issue to the industry like it was before, errors derived from antiquated estimating methods will still be cause for caution into the future. Adopting an estimating platform like SharpeSoft Estimator is the best first step you can take.

Getting in Contact

“We actually reviewed several different software at the time. Hard Dollar, WinEst, Bid2Win, HCSS, and others were just launching their products. What we liked about SharpeSoft was its ease of use, intuitive design, and the fact that we didn’t have to save information manually. My estimating staff started their estimating careers using paper, pencil and a ten-key adding machine, so just getting them to move from doing it manually to an Excel spreadsheet was already a major accomplishment. Encouraging them to learn an entirely new software package was going to be an even bigger challenge. Remember, this was 1999, when seasoned estimators were typically not computer literate. SharpeSoft was designed by a contractor, not by a software engineer. The software was well thought out regarding the ease of keeping your material cost updated, labor increases are simple to update, and fuel and oil cost increases take just a click.”

“We spotted a small ad in the back of a trade magazine for SharpeSoft (it was just SHARPE Software back in those days). We reached out to the sales staff and ultimately met Dan Ontiveros, who was the owner at the time. We hit it off with Dan right away.”

Interaction with SharpeSoft

“Shortly after that, we made the commitment and bought 3 license keys. My older estimators were dreading the implementation process, so the software just sat on a shelf for about a year.  We blew the dust off it one winter and decided to reinvigorate our decision and move forward with implementation.  The SharpeSoft staff explained that you don’t need to input your own data tables like you would with other products, like HCSS or Timberline. SharpeSoft had already populated the databases for us with data Dan used when he was bidding his own jobs as a utility contractor. Dan told us to just start using the software with the data that’s already in the  tables, and, as you use it, just edit the tables up to your liking. This approach made it much easier to implement and learn the product. You could quickly figure out which table the program was pulling data from, so you learned where to put information and how the software functioned as you used it. It took some time to edit the tables as we liked, but it didn’t stop us from bidding jobs.  We still have some material data in our tables that was originally provided to us in the SharpeSoft databases when we received the software over 25 years ago. Once we decided to move onto the SharpeSoft platform, it didn’t take but a few bids to get the hang of it.”

SharpeSoft is committed to making the estimating process as functional as possible. While user-driven data will always be held at a premium, as your own information that you can trust, SharpeSoft also offers stock data to use while getting your bearings.

How has SharpeSoft Helped

“We bid projects much more quickly, and at a higher quality and greater detail. Our firm grew from about $10 Million in annual volume a year to over $60 Million a year in volume and SharpeSoft was with us all the way. Today, our bids are more reliable, consistent, and complete due to the historical work packages and Master Bid Items that we created and established for use at our firm.”

Would you Recommend SharpeSoft?

“We have recommended SharpeSoft to other competitors and even gave one of them a demonstration of the software in our office. One of these competitors bought a license key and the estimator used it until he retired. We also advocated the IPM product to a public owner who ultimately implemented the IPM product.”

We couldn’t ask for more dedicated recommendations! For interest in any of SharpeSoft’s other fine products, such as the Integrated Project Manager, please send all inquiries to solutions@sharpesoft.com.