California Builders Exchanges Form State Wide Network

The Builders Exchanges throughout the State of California have traditionally been the single best source for local projects for California’ many contractors.

Through the years, as the economy and technology changed, the local builders’ exchanges adapted to the changes by offering a wider range of projects, increased safety training programs, expanded the business classes, and benefits for owners and employees covering group health, insurance, retirement plans and a wide array of additional services.

As the industry became more technology driven, our local plan rooms created the Online Plan Service which made our local projects available to jobsites and offices, eliminating the need to drive to the plan rooms to physically unroll a set of paper plans. Many contractors also began submitting projects to the plan rooms electronically. We greatly expanded the amount of plans we could place in our plan rooms as we greatly reduced the cost of distributing those plans. We could now take a plan off a website, download from FTP sites, or even have a CD mailed, all designed to get more information to the contractors faster, and far less expensive.

Just as the economy took a severe downturn, and the contractors were forced to go out farther and farther from their local market, the plan rooms were able to gather more projects from outlying areas so that the local members could find the work they needed.

Each plan room in our network began to notice that we were spending more and more time chasing, uploading, and managing similar high profile projects, and the amount of duplication and redundant work was wasted energy. We also had set up a system that allowed for our members to “cross over” into other plan rooms for a discounted fee, so that each member could see more projects without having to join each plan room individually. For a while, this worked well, until the large national networks began pushing projects out to the builders online as well. While we had buildings, dedicated local staff, full services and benefits, our competitors offered project lists.

The plan rooms realized that in order to compete on a state wide scale, we couldn’t simply rely on the benefits we provided, we had to become the best source of project distribution out there. We needed to eliminate redundancy, and even further refine our system so that our viewers were not paying for cross overs only to see duplicate projects, and the plan providers weren’t sending projects out to multiple sources when we could make it far more efficient.

The Builders Exchanges and Contractors Associations in California decided to form The Golden State Online Plan Service for that reason. The participating plan rooms have divided up our regions to manage, each of us dedicating staff time to searching out and managing the projects in our select counties, and then opened up each of the plan rooms to each other. Now, as a member of your local builders’ exchange, you get access to the largest online plan room network available.

You can now join locally and build regionally. Use your plan rooms group health plan, insurance program, educational opportunities, networking events and all of the other programs that make the Builders Exchange system so vital, and then also have access to the entire State of California for your project needs.

At the time of formation, we start this network with over 10,400 eyes on the projects the builders submit. For suppliers, that is a decent start to getting your brand noticed. For builders, that is a lot of sub-contractors to pick from.

Other large data providers will post any project from any source. We regularly get calls from members of these other sources saying they found our project on the other site and can’t view it. They publish lists, we publish projects. Membership with our network gives you access to projects that are bidding now to build now. We know what is coming down the pipe, or the planning commissions approved, but if they are not work that is ready for you, then it’s clutter.   With over 1,000 projects in our database today, and that number being added to each and every day, that is a great deal of work for you. With dedicated local focuses, you can be a local builder and know that your local plan room is finding work in your area, or you can just as easily be satisfied if you build anywhere in the state.

These are the participating members of the Golden State Online Plan Service, and the counties they specialize in. Please support your local plan room and gain access to the entire State of California. Each office employs local staff. Due to the size and need for round the clock access, our network is housed in the most powerful data center available, right here in Sacramento. We don’t outsource any element of our network to out of state or out of country independent contractors. Our staff knows our members, and our communities.