“How ESTA Fits into the Firm’s Future Goals?” 

Andreas: We’re looking to grow our team and grow the business. All three of those things we can offer as a service to our clients are areas we want to grow as new people join our team.

The best thing about having something like ESTA is the standardisation it brings to that growth. That lets you uphold your quality and your standards for your clients as you develop and grow. As you get bigger, the hardest part is making sure the new people you bring in work to your standard and deliver the quality your clients expect. Having a platform like ESTA that creates that standardisation of quality lets us take on that growth with less risk. So we can be genuinely confident about growing and developing the team now that we have the platform behind us.

“How Do You Introduce ESTA to other Colleagues?” 

Andreas: I’ve recommended it heavily already. I’ve told people how brilliant it is, and that what we can do with this software is what the massive firms are already doing in-house. It puts us on a level playing field, in the sense of being fully digitally adopted. It’s also prompted us to reconsider other software we use and look at better versions of those tools. So for us, it’s been brilliant.

“First Impression of ESTA”

Andreas: I joined from a much larger consultancy that had its own in-house developers and its own in-house cost-management and quantity-surveying apps. I thought what they were doing wasn’t otherwise available in the market, and that they’d built it to stay ahead of the game. So when I joined a much smaller consultancy, about a tenth of our old size, and saw it had found software that did the same thing, in a much simpler way and without being too expensive, I was really impressed. I liked its simplicity and the fact that it didn’t over-complicate things.

“What Would You Tell Other Firms About ESTA?”

Andreas: I’ve told them it can handle the full post-contract setup and take you from the start of construction all the way through to completion. And now, with the tendering feature, it also covers the pre-contract stage, which is great. The biggest thing I tell people is that it’s a growing, evolving piece of software that’s constantly developing. But it does need a starting place, and for us when I joined, that was the post-contract admin and reporting. That was our starting point. Since then it’s evolved into procurement and tendering. I’ve seen other companies use repurposed platforms for that, not fit for purpose, things they had to tweak to make work, whereas ESTA has been built for this exact purpose of construction tendering and procurement.

“The Unexpected impact ESTA Had on the Team”

Andreas: For me, what it did was give the team the proper way to do things and carry out their work, especially from a contracting perspective. When you’re drafting a valuation, a recommendation for payment, or a payment certificate, the way it’s structured, setting aside that it’s also formatted really well, and what it captures means there’s no discrepancy over the right and wrong way of doing it. It takes away the grey areas, because that’s a black-and-white piece of work and documentation. That was really good for us, especially for the more junior people in the team who are learning to run their own projects, work more independently, and raise those certificates. It was really helpful.

“What Day-to-Day Work Looks Like with ESTA”

Andreas: It fits into everything we do. On any project we have three opportunities to be appointed: as project manager, quantity surveyor, or contract administrator, sometimes all three roles, sometimes two, sometimes just one. We’re able to use ESTA to cover all the reporting and administrative paperwork on those projects pretty seamlessly now. All our projects are now on ESTA, and we did the full migration about three months ago. Anything new starts on ESTA, and everyone knows it’s company policy to use it on their projects now. So we’ve really invested in it, and it’s been brilliant for us.