Planning and overseeing your projects has never been easier thanks to a variety of apps available on mobile devices. These apps can help you more efficiently communicate with superintendents and workers, draw up designs for projects and keep track of dates and deadlines.
Here is a quick look at five mobile apps – some are relatively new, others more established – that home builders are using. These apps focus on project, not business, administration.
Magicplan, an app geared toward interior design, allows builders to virtually – and accurately – place design elements and appliances in their floorplans. The app uses images and videos from their smartphones to construct the floorplan of the selected space. Magicplan is a solid choice for home builders, designers and others looking for an easier way to create floorplans and imagine design elements and appliances within them.
Fieldwire enables construction managers to share floorplans more easily with the rest of their teams, including subcontractors. Fieldwire helps construction managers share assignments and track hours and material costs. It’s a solid project management app for bridging the gap between office staff and workers in the field.
LumberCalc focuses specifically on materials cost evaluation. It enables home builders to scan boards and quickly convert their dimensions into board feet. The app also allows users to calculate order totals after plugging in the MBF price, and enables them to estimate dimensions for specific paneling profiles.
Where Magicplan focuses on interior design, Eagleview is geared specifically toward roofline planning. Using GPS technology, Eagleview allows home builders to calculate the proportions of any roofline, an important assist for builders planning to add extensions to standing structures or renovating rooflines on existing homes.
Evernote is a cross-platform app that helps home builders keep track of their schedules through note-taking and archiving software. Builders who find it a challenge to keep track of different aspects of their projects – budgetary expenses, timetables, individual worker assignments, and punch lists – can use Evernote to easily record it all. Users can tag, annotate, edit and share their notes with attached photos and files. Evernote has over 200 million users worldwide, making it one of the most popular mobile apps.
The apps listed above are just a handful of the countless mobile tools that can make it easier for home builders to manage their projects more efficiently.
Click here to find more information on many other builder apps reviewed on NAHBNow.
This post was researched and written by Luke Goodwin, a summer intern for NAHB Communications.
