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Elizabeth Geiser knows preconstruction.
Geiser spent 23 years as a senior director of preconstruction, before becoming vice president of preconstruction at Southfield, Michigan-based Barton Malow. The 25-year industry veteran has spent her career planning the initial phase of construction, before stakes are driven into the ground and wood is cut.
A seasoned professional who remembers using measuring wheels and handheld counters to gather data before entering it into Excel, Geiser now leverages cloud-based technology to streamline the early stages of planning. Their latest find has been Join, an Oakland, California-based company that provides preconstruction software.
Here, Geiser talks to Construction Dive about his experience with preconstruction and how his team uses the technology today.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Immersion in CONSTRUCTION: What was the world of preconstruction like when you started?
ELIZABETH GEISER: When I first started, you joked that you could weigh the different drawings to figure out the price of the job. We had markers and wheels.
Elizabeth Geiser
Courtesy of Barton Malow
We had the click to count and then a lot of our estimation was done in Microsoft Excel at the time. I helped us move [estimating program] MC2 and then WinEst [another takeoff tool].
I joked that three changes is my limit.
Now, we are using many different tools for takeoff, mainly Bluebeam or Autodesk Takeoff. It’s crazy how far technology has come.
You started using Join, a type of pre-build software. When did you start using it and what problems were you trying to solve?
I remember the first job we worked on with Join was a hospital project, the Intermountain Health Lutheran Hospital Project in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.
Join is a cloud-based tracking tool where you can upload your initial estimate and then any changes until the next time you do a full estimate. It is the source of truth, is what I always say.
Before joining, we tracked it in Excel. We had a cost control record in Excel. Then I needed to know if I had the correct Excel file or not, if I had a PDF printout of it, if it was the latest or not. Then really only one person could be in Excel at a time to update it. So there was that kind of limitation as well.
I said, “Okay, guys, we’re all going to be there, good, bad, or ugly. That’s what we’re doing.”
We invited everyone, I think we had over 70 people on this project, and it went well. Everyone was very happy with it. The owner liked the transparency, that they could go in and export things and play with things. And even since that project, there has been a lot of progress.
How did Join help in this hospital project?
We set levels early with all users, understanding what their rules are and what they can see and do. The owner’s representative was a power user. He was exporting things to Excel and then making his own game.
I don’t know if it surprised me, but it was always up to date, like every time you looked up where we were, everyone knew that was the latest and greatest information.
You don’t have to wonder, it’s this first round final, first round final, you know, the whole name game of the different things that come out.
Any other aspects that stood out to you?
I will say that at Michigan State University’s Center for Digital Innovation and Engineering, which started in December 2023, that’s when the Join’s Scenarios feature was implemented.
He’s basically doing a “what if” scenario and you can see it live. You don’t need to have a side sheet with “What if I accepted X, Y, and Z.” In this scenario, you can select X, Y, and Z and see what your final answer is and see how far you are from budget or not.
For this project, we had some pretty significant budget challenges. The budget was 300 million dollars. We were at $415 million, so it was like, “Okay, we’ve got more buildings than we’ve budgeted for. So what can we do?”
Without Join, I don’t know how we would have done it in the time frame we had. We had a day or two and had to come up with 10 or 15 different options. Today we can do it in an hour.
How much does it cost?
If you break it down by person (we probably have 100 people using it), it seems like a lot compared to some other software.
But I think it’s worth it. I keep fighting for it. I don’t want to go back to Excel, that’s for sure.
