Dimensions User Conference Recap: Next-Gen Solutions for Civil Contractors

Charity Heller

Whew!

With Dimensions (closely) in the rearview mirror and all of us returning to business as usual, we wanted to take a quick moment and reflect on some of the incredible things that happened over the past few days.

Dimensions is Trimble's marquee annual event, bringing together professionals from key industries, such as geospatial, construction, agriculture and transportation. The conference featured keynote presentations, hands-on training, networking opportunities and exhibitions showcasing the latest innovations in construction technology and software.

Over the three-day event, attendees gained insights into how Trimble solutions can help improve productivity, efficiency, and safety in their respective fields.

If you weren’t able to attend this year or just want to relive the magic, we’ve got you covered! Here’s a recap of key moments to help you discover what’s new, visualize what’s next and solve your biggest construction challenges now.

To kick off this exciting conference, Rob Painter, Trimble CEO, inspired attendees with the power of connection, followed up with presentations by Trimble experts Chris Peppler, Stephanie Michaud, Sumele Adelana and Lawrence Smith, who delivered a jampacked session on the latest Trimble Technologies.

However, the standout for civil contractors was the story of how Villager Construction used B2W to increase bidding speed by more than 6X, improve estimate accuracy and achieve real-time collaboration through a unified scheduling application.

Watch the Keynote recording!

This keynote presentation also included two new BIG improvements to the B2W platform.

(P.S. While we encourage you to watch the whole video, if you’d like to view the B2W content, skip to the 56-minute mark).

Exciting new features for B2W

When products work together, everybody wins. That’s why we’re excited to introduce two new integrated workflows for Civil Contractors:

1. B2W Operations + Spectrum AppXchange

This powerful integration automates the flow of resource and jobs data between Trimble Spectrum ERP and B2W Operations. Combining these two Trimble systems eliminates traditional, file-based uploads and ensures faster, more accurate progress reporting without the need for redundant, error-prone and time-consuming data entry.

Learn more: B2W Operational Suite + Viewpoint Spectrum

2. B2W Track + Trimble Siteworks

By integrating Trimble’s best-in-class progress tracking and easy-to-use field software, you can truly connect the field and office by sending quantity measurement requests directly from B2W Track to Trimble Siteworks to obtain accurate field data on progress quantities achieved for true-up with the ERP. This provides greater precision in managing progress to plan against production targets and billable items and removes the need for time-consuming manual quantity reporting.

In-depth B2W learning sessions

Trimble Dimensions was PACKED with over 400 breakout sessions. Here are a few highlighting the latest in civil and heavy highway technology:

"Connecting the Site with Trimble and B2W: The Civil Contractor’s Perspective"

In this session, civil construction leaders discussed their journey connecting the job site and the back office.

This facilitated discussion and audience Q&A guided by Cam Clark, Earthmoving Director at Trimble, provided a unique opportunity to hear how top contractors are combining Trimble and B2W solutions to solve key communication challenges, improve efficiency, reduce rework and streamline workflows.

"Using Takeoffs and Constructible Data in B2W Estimate"

This classroom session, led by Trimble experts Tom Willey, Solutions Engineer Manager and Scott Bridges, Digital Construction Professional, featured multiple prescriptive, end-to-end workflows and the benefits of using software for earthwork takeoffs, the creation of 3D constructible models and streamlined delivery of that data for generating more accurate estimates.

"Innovation Roundtable: Next-Gen Civil Estimating Tech"

Closing out the conference on Wednesday, Patrick Reitz, Senior Product Manager at Trimble, facilitated an open conversation between B2W users and experts about what a “next-gen” civil estimating solution should offer. Some of the key elements included:

Performance and scalability
New features
An open architecture
The benefits of the latest technologies
Solutions to the real problems civil contractors face today.

"Heavy Equipment Performance KPIs Every Executive Should Know"

Numbers don’t lie!

In this classroom session, Rich King, Treasurer/CFO of Schlouch Incorporated and John Kane, Product Manager at B2W, took attendees on a deep dive into Civil construction KPIs–what they are, why they’re important and how they impact the organization.

After a brief overview of Rich's work with the AEMP and CFMA organizations to define the 34 KPIs critical to Schlouch’s success, the duo walked through what data to capture and what a workflow would look like in B2W Maintain and other CMMS. Rich and John then discussed the benchmarks or goals of each KPI and finished with examples of the enhanced ROI created from using the KPIs and implementing an effective workflow to capture the data.

The session ended with a lively Q&A and time for attendees to meet and network with other construction professionals.

"What's Next: Civil Operations Platform User Roundtable"

The open exchange of ideas and best practices in civil construction is essential to technological innovation, and building better workflows is a key factor in that journey.

In this session, Trimble product experts John Sheedy and Michael Morneau talked with a highly engaged group of customers from small and large civil construction organizations about workflows for scheduling, project tracking and equipment maintenance.

This session also included an overview and examples of Trimble's progress in delivering connected workflows for the civil construction market, including:

Progress to Plan: Connecting Siteworks to B2W Track for receiving accurate progress quantities from the field.

ERP Integrations: Connecting Viewpoint Spectrum with the B2W Operational Suite for critical data integrations.

There was also lively discussion around areas to explore moving forward, including connected workflows between the B2W Operational Suite and Viewpoint Vista, Trimble Connect, Trimble Stratus and others.

Connecting Estimates to Production Actuals and Market Data

Production rates, management reporting and market analysis are some of the best methods for achieving estimating precision and accuracy in B2W Estimate.

From setting up tracking accounts to the final bid, Michael Welldon, Training Manager at Trimble, showed us how combining B2W’s estimating and field tracking software applications allows estimators to understand how their jobs have been performed in the past and in real time using production rate information for all active and completed jobs.

In this session, attendees were able to dig into the B2W Track platform to view their own crews' production rates for similar jobs currently being estimated–taking the "guesswork" out of what they think crews can accomplish versus what they're actually capable of completing based on daily production quantities from daily reports or field logs.

Here, we can see the job information, when the last activity on that job occurred, the Job Cost ID, a description of that account and the quantity and actual production rate numbers.

This session was an absolute hit with civil contractors. Here are a few of the feedback highlights:

"Amazing!"
"Just what we were looking for."
"EXACTLY what we needed."
"How did we manage before this?"

Mastering the Benefits of Trimble Construction One for Civil Contractors

Trimble Construction One for Civil is changing how infrastructure contractors buy, deploy and manage integrated construction technology.

In this session, Scott Adams, Solutions Engineer at Trimble, reviewed the civil estimating and OPS solutions within Trimble Construction One. Scott also discussed the expanded product capabilities users will see in their transition to the Cloud, including expanded integration offerings and connected Trimble workflows.

See you next year!

Dimensions 2024 was undoubtedly a ground-breaking (pun intended) opportunity to connect with and learn from like-minded peers, pros and partners helping to build the world. We can't wait to see you next year!