IPIN Tip of the Month: Distance from You (New Feature)

Approximately 3,000 actively bidding projects are reported in the Builders Exchange online planroom annually covering an area of approximately 60,000 square miles in Kentucky and Southern Indiana and hundreds of cities, towns and counties. It’s easy to understand why many of our members might not be able to tell how far a project is located from them at first glance, which is why we’ve added a new feature to the IPIN system: Distance from You.

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The new feature is located beneath the Project Location on the Project Details page of each project. Distance from You lets members know the approximate distance (in miles) of the project location from their location at a quick glance, letting them know if the project is within a reasonable range they would like to travel to do work. The distance is determined by the number of miles between the mid-point of the zip code of the member’s office location and the mid-point of the zip code of the project location. It is not an exact distance, but an approximation. A more exact distance can be found by clicking on the address of the project, which will open the project location in Google Maps, which can be used for directions and exact distances from any location. ———————————————————————————————————————————-

For more tips like this one, join us in Louisville on the third Friday of every month from 10-11:30 a.m. for free IPIN training at the Builders Exchange Center for Education & Training Excellence, 2300 Meadow Drive, Louisville, KY 40218 or at the same time on the fourth Friday of every month at our Lexington location, 1035 Strader Drive, Suite 100, Lexington, KY 40505. Online webinar training is also available on the third Thursday of every month from 10-11:30 a.m.

Call me, Aaron Thomas, at (502) 459-9800 or e-mail athomas@bxkentucky.com to RSVP.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for IPIN Tip of the Month, comment below or e-mail me at the address listed above.

Looking for more tips? Click here to look at every IPIN Tip of the Month.

Thanks for reading!

Aaron Thomas
Director of Operations
Builders Exchange of Kentucky

IPIN Tip of the Month: Batch Selecting Plan Divisions in One Click

In our recent survey, one of the most frequently requested features that was cited as missing from the IPIN system was the ability to batch select multiple plans by division with one click for downloading or purchasing.

You spoke and we listened: members can now select multiple plans under each discipline in one click of the mouse.

This new feature is easy to learn and can potentially save your index finger from a lot of extra clicking.

 

Step 1. Navigate to the “Plans” page of the project.

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Step 2. Click the empty box to the left of the division you would like to download or purchase. This will add a checkmark to every plan underneath that division. You can also deselect or add individual pages within the division or other divisions.

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Step 3. Once every desired plan has been checked, click the “Download PDFs”, “Download TIFFs”, or “Purchase Plans” icons at the top of the page to download or purchase the selected plans in the selected format.

That’s all there is to it!

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For more tips like this one, join us in Louisville on the third Friday of every month from 10-11:30 a.m. for free IPIN training at the Builders Exchange Center for Education & Training Excellence, 2300 Meadow Drive, Louisville, KY 40218 or at the same time on the fourth Friday of every month at our Lexington location, 1035 Strader Drive, Suite 100, Lexington, KY 40505. Online webinar training is also available on the third Thursday of every month from 10-11:30 a.m.

Call me, Aaron Thomas, at (502) 459-9800 or e-mail athomas@bxkentucky.com to RSVP.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for IPIN Tip of the Month, comment below or e-mail me at the address listed above.

Looking for more tips? Click here to look at every IPIN Tip of the Month.

Thanks for reading!

Aaron Thomas
Director of IT
Builders Exchange of Kentucky

IPIN Tip of the Month: Accessing Specifications

Builders Exchange members with an upgraded membership have full access to the construction documents for every project posted to the Builders Exchange Online Planroom, including  the specifications.

Specifications are available in PDF format, but there are a variety of ways to access them in the Builders Exchange Online Planroom

Downloading Whole Spec Books (NEW FEATURE)

Builders Exchange is now providing one click access to the entire specification booklet in one PDF file.

The link to the PDF containing the whole spec book will always be listed at the top of the index of specifications. It will be labeled “Whole Spec Book” with the spec section number of “00000”:

If there are multiple volumes of specifications, each volume will be available separately. Volume 1 will be listed as  “Whole Spec Book Vol. 1”, Volume 2 as “Whole Spec Book Vol. 2”, etc.

Left click to open the spec in your browser, or right click and choose “Save Target As” (when using Internet Explorer) to save the file to your computer.

Downloading Individual Spec Sections

Builders Exchange also separates each spec book into it’s component sections as listed by its table of contents, processes the specifications through optical character recognition (OCR) for SAM Search, and indexes each section for spec index searching.

Each section is available in PDF format by left clicking on the name of the section. This will open a PDF of the spec within your browser. The PDF can also be downloaded to your computer by right clicking and saving the file.

Downloading Multiple Individual Spec Sections (Batch Download)

To download multiple individual spec sections, first left click the box to the left of each spec section you would like to download.

Next, click the “Download” button at the top of the specs.

You will then be prompted to download a zip file which contains each of the separate spec sections in PDF format. Save the zip file to your desktop. Once it is finished downloading, open the zip file to access each of the spec sections  marked for downloading.

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For more tips like this one, join us in Louisville on the third Friday of every month from 10-11:30 a.m. for free IPIN training at the Builders Exchange Center for Education & Training Excellence, 2300 Meadow Drive, Louisville, KY 40218 or at the same time on the fourth Friday of every month at our Lexington location, 1035 Strader Drive, Suite 100, Lexington, KY 40505. Online webinar training is also available on the third Thursday of every month from 10-11:30 a.m.

Call me, Aaron Thomas, at (502) 459-9800 or e-mail athomas@bxkentucky.com to RSVP.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for IPIN Tip of the Month, comment below or e-mail me at the address listed above.

Thanks for reading!

Aaron Thomas
Director of IT
Builders Exchange of Kentucky

IPIN Tip of the Month: Project Quick Search

Looking for a project in the Builders Exchange Online Planroom? Project quick search gives you the tools to find it quickly!

Project Quick Search lets you search for projects in all four phases: Prebid, Active, Postbid, and Archived. Searches can be conducted by Project Name (Name), Project ID (Proj ID), Bid Date, and Project Notes (Notes)

Start by choosing which phase or phases you would like to search in by placing a checkmark in each box. Searches can be conducted in one phase at a time or all four phases at a time.

Next search by project name, project ID, bid date, or in the project notes. Only one field may be searched for at a time.

When searching by project name, I tell members that less is more. One key word included in the name of the project sought after is generally good enough to find a project. For example, when looking for a project at Lexington Bluegrass Airport, a simple search for “airport” will be more efficient and effective than a search for the entire name of the project.

However, when searching for projects in the “Archived” phase using the name search, the more specific the better. There are over 27,000 projects listed in the archived phase, which means that searching for “school” or “airport” will yield thousands of results. This doesn’t help narrow things down.

Searching by project ID will always yield a single result. Each project in the IPIN system has a unique project ID (i.e. 2013-040D) automatically assigned to it. This ID number is visible anywhere the project name or details are visible.

To search for a project by its ID, it’s necessary to have the exact ID, dash included. Partial IDs will yield zero results.

A search by bid date will produce a list of every project bidding on a specific date. Dates can be entered in the following formats: 4-13-2013; 4/13/2013; April 13, 2013; April 13 2013

Finally, a search for a keyword or phrase in the Notes field will produce every project that includes those words in the project notes. For more on project notes, click here.

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Call or e-mail Aaron Thomas at 502-459-9800 if you have any additional questions on bidders lists or the IPIN system.

Thanks for reading and keep checking back for more IPIN tips, information on the construction industry, and Builders Exchange special events!

Aaron Thomas
Director of IT
Builders Exchange of Kentucky