Musselman & Hall Contractors LLC, based in Overland Park, Kansas, has spearheaded construction projects throughout the Midwest focusing on concrete, asphalt and rail for most of the past century. Employee-owned and built on long-standing client relationships, the firm has expanded its work over the past 20 years beyond its historic specialties and government projects to include more general contracting to a broader client base.
Like most experienced construction firms, Musselman & Hall has incorporated industry technology as it has evolved over the years, adopting tools that allow the company to stay at the forefront of speed, precision and efficiency, critical principles for any construction team.
“We have always wanted to be an organization that is ahead of the changes with technology and things in the market. Sometimes we fall behind, but we always strive to be ahead of the curve and give our people the best tools to do their jobs,” said Kyle VanSlyke, Musselman & Hall COO and a firm veteran 25 years old
But in 2021, the company found itself at a crossroads with one of its technology tools, particularly its pre-construction group responsible for conducting project procurement and construction cost estimates. At the time, the pre-construction team was using take-off software to calculate estimates that hit their limit. “The files were in a specific OST format and our build was moved to PDF,” said Christopher Leheney, the company’s director of pre-construction.
OST is a file type that would have to be converted to PDF after takeoffs were completed, adding a layer of work that made it difficult to use in an industry increasingly focused on PDF plan documents. If the company received documents in PDF, for example, it would need to be converted to OST for takeoff work before being converted back to PDF for the client to review.
The team wanted something that could work with PDF more natively, allowing markup and other take-off features to be done seamlessly within a document type, thus removing that extra layer of work.
After extensive research, Musselman & Hall quickly settled on Bluebeam as the solution. “We had several [tools] on our list, maybe four or five, and when it came down to studying and refining and trying to figure out what would be the best fit for us, Bluebeam rose to the short list,” Leheney said.
Choosing Bluebeam
All in all, settling on Bluebeam for its quantitative take-off capability was an easy choice. “We circled the pros and cons, weighing here the price of this one against that; that’s what this one gives us that the other one doesn’t”, said Leheney. Bluebeam checked all the boxes for the company.
By Frank Kalman
