InSite’s Elevation Pro And Modernity As a Construction Software Selection Criteria

Contractors are driving efficiencies in their business with digital technologies in fits and starts. Commercial software for construction started with project accounting and enterprise resource planning (ERP) as early as the 1970s. In more recent decades, this has extended increasingly beyond the back-office project accounting and planning side of the business to operational technologies that shave time and steps off the work-in-progress phase of the project in the field and address bidding and preconstruction.

What this means is that in the back-office and field operations, the construction industry has come to rely on a long list of software products that have been in the market for decades, and buyers will need to determine which are are up to the requirements of 21st Century business.

After all, technology has changed a lot since Lotus 1-2-3 for the PC and the subsequent move to mainframe computing to make applications shareable, creating one version of the truth. Mainframes and even the idea of buying software outright are themselves now in the rearview mirror as modern technologies enable delivery of software over the internet on subscription, eliminating many of the costs and disruptions associated with the old model.

Construction Software Beginnings

Broad applications for construction enterprise resource planning (ERP) that unite the general ledger or accounting functions with project management and operational activities are not new. Solutions like Sage 100 Contractor and Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate have been in the market since long before Sage acquired and rebranded them. Viewpoint, a construction ERP company now owned by Trimble, was founded, for instance, in 1976.

These and other broad enterprise products have been in use for decades, even as business and enterprise computing has evolved.

In the meantime, software to encompass, standardize, streamline and automate field work has come to market, with companies like AGTEK of Livermore, Cal., acquired by Hexagon in 2018, entering the market as early as 1981. This first mover status in the market usually brings a competitive advantage, and as an early competitor Rochester, N.Y.-based InSite Software had some catching up to do in market presence and functionality after its founding in 1988. More mature software may include a long laundry list of functional features, added over time. A newer competitor may come to market initially with a smaller feature set. The young product has a long lifecycle so there is an upside to research and development investments to expand the functional footprint.

But like many other software companies in construction and other sectors, InSite Software CEO Steve Warfle and his team found that a list of product features was not the only important success factor.

Warfle was pressed by InSite Software CTO Doug Chasman to follow other construction and business software products making the jump to new technologies, cloud-based delivery methods and subscription pricing. This is in contrast to the on-premise approach with a single, perpetual license sale early construction software was designed for. Some vendors like Sage have modern cloud software products in their portfolio, and Sage plans to migrate Sage 100 Contractor and Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate customers to a construction edition of Sage Intacct, a more modern, multi-tenant software-as-a-service (SaaS) ERP product it acquired in 2017.

For more insights into what makes multi-tenant SaaS tick, check out this video interview with Pemeco CEO Jonathan Gross. This change in architecture hinges on more modern technologies inside the software tech stack and new design conventions that do more than just change how the software is delivered. Modernization, thanks to new technologies and fresh thinking they enable, can make the software easier to use, more intuitive and powerful, meeting current expectations set by evolving consumer software.

Earthworks Takeoff Software Reinvention

“Five years ago, our technology was state-of-the-art for the early 2000s, but the industry had moved on,” Warfle said in our December 2024 briefing session. “We decided to make a fresh start. It wasn’t easy, but it was worth it. We leveraged decades of customer insights, competitor knowledge, and modern technology to build a better product. The workflow is familiar to our customers, but vastly improved. We offer a one-hour class to help them transition. It’s been a real win … Modern expectations like 4K monitors and cloud sharing were nonexistent when we built our earlier products. Starting over let us integrate these advancements. Our new software minimizes training time, offers modern features, and outpaces legacy products still stuck in the past.”

One simple usability win from the reboot was the ability to use multiple data sets in the aggregate rather than cross-referencing them individually.

“When we first founded the company, people worked with paper plans and digitizers,” Warfle said. “Now, we deal with multiple data sources: PDFs, CAD files, drone topography, GPS rover surveys, and even Google Earth imagery. Customers need to work with all these data sources simultaneously, not one at a time. Elevation Pro allows users to open multiple sources at once. We’re the only company doing this, which has significantly boosted productivity.”

New InSite Elevation Pro feature for exported KMZ files.

Mobile Earthworks Solution

The value of construction software increases when it exposes data and functionality through mobile devices—which is one more capability that has been developed with InSite Software’s Elevation Pro.

“We’ve developed tools that leverage the technology most people already carry—a phone with GPS,” Warfle said. “Customers can walk a job site, gather data, and make decisions without proprietary equipment. We ensure our tools stay aligned with both customer needs and the latest technology.”

Elevation Pro pushes data directly to the mobile device that provides visibility of the plan and locations of specific cuts and fills.

“We allow users to export KMZ files for use in Google Earth on their phones, showing their exact location on-site,” Warfle said. “A customer told me how this feature transformed their workflow. They used it to mark delivery locations for supplies, ensuring everything was correctly placed, saving time and reducing cleanup. Now they say the delivery is where the blue dot is or they’re coming back to move it. Recognizing that everyone has a smartphone, we leveraged that to create practical solutions.”

Grade Control, Rapid Evolution and the Future

Warfle credits 2D and 3D grade control technology on earthworks equipment as essential to business viability for modern site contractors.

“The world has changed,” Warfle said. “In grading, if you’re not using GPS machine control, you’re missing out. Labor shortages are a big challenge.”

InSite Software is beefing up, according to Warfle, data integration with bidding software packages and expanding GPS machine control capabilities. A new utility module is under development, offering robust 3D visualization and streamlined workflows.

Modern development processes that came with the reimagining of the software make it easier to introduce new features like these and others.

“Recently, a customer reported a unique issue with a PDF,” Warfle said. “I documented it, submitted it to the development team, and it was resolved the same day, included in the next build. That responsiveness highlights the benefits of a modern platform—it allows us to act quickly and deliver real value.”

This flexibility, which comes thanks to the rebuild five years ago, means Elevation Pro can not only rapidly deliver new functionality like the upcoming utility module, but support evolving requirements of GPS machine control hardware from multiple vendors.

But modern software architecture does more than facilitate change—it makes the software more likely to be around into the future.

“As we look at hiring developers to work on the product, we realize these older technology stacks are no longer taught in school,” Warfle said. “We know one reason we needed to do this was so we could find the talent and the skills for continuous development. Now that we’re here, we focus on owning the market. For instance, drone-generated data has driven us something to integrate with our relevant technology, even though that was not something explicitly requested by customers.”

Bottom Line

Warfle said InSite Software is catching up with competitors on feature/function, and we’ll see this pattern across multiple software categories where mature software that has been in market for decades has longer feature lists than newer, more modern solutions.

Warfle and InSite are demonstrating how the vendor behind a modern software solution will generally be able to add functionality more rapidly and cost-effectively than the vendor behind a legacy software product can re-invent their software on modern technologies and architecture.

One software product with a sizable construction install base, Microsoft Dynamics GP, is now after a protracted swan song, out of support. That product had to compete with several other Dynamics products and was not helped in this by its reliance on Dexterity—a proprietary programming language developed in the 1980s. This, along with other technological limitations and competition from other products in the Dynamics family, spelled the end of life for this product. This is a fate shared by other legacy products—some out of support, others being maintained in stasis for the installed base but with new development effectively mothballed.

When selecting construction software, it therefore makes sense to do due diligence on how modern the software is. A modern architecture will speed development, improve performance and usability and make it a more profitable product, which translates into longevity.

Contractors should ask vendors questions about software products that are part of a portfolio of multiple products under common ownership—are they more modern applications with a longer runway ahead of them? These products may secure more development resources than older school products and can evolve more quickly.

Those evaluating software from single-product software vendors with more legacy-style solutions will want to ask questions about the product roadmap, plans to bring it into a more modern architecture, as opposed to hosting the old on-premise product in the cloud.

Warfle and the team behind Elevation Pro have only one product priority, which made it easier for them to make the significant investment in modernizing the product five years ago. Excavation and sitework contractors can trust that the product will be performant and evolving to meet their needs well into the future.

QUESTIONS TO ASK CONSTRUCTION SOFTWARE VENDORS TO DETERMINE MODERNITY

• What is the history of release cycles for the software, and when was the last major redesign?

• How has the product evolved over the last five years, the last 10 years?

• Is there an API for the product, and is it RESTful?

• How easy is it to open new APIs or webhooks?

• What programming languages and component technologies make up the product, including the database and technology used in the interface and middle tier?

• How often are you pushing down updates, including bug fixes, incremental functionality updates and substantial functional updates?

• What is the roadmap for future development? How reliably have you performed against roadmap plans announced in the past?

Disclosure: Rathmann Insights LLC has provided consulting services to InSite Software.