ICE®

Speed up takeoff, increase accuracy, and make better use of your time with ICE from MC². Crystallizing over 40 years of construction industry experience, ICE thinks like an estimator thinks, and works like an estimator works, increasing your productivity and giving you the consistency you must have to bid with confidence. ICE gives you more time to study a job, to find ways of working more efficiently, and to assemble the winning package of quotes and bids.

Construction Systems roll up all the characteristics of a building component into a concise Q-and-A format, without resorting to long, tedious lists of repetitive Assemblies, or requiring constant overrides of one-size-fits-all logic. ICE Knowledge Bases give you menus of Construction Systems specific to your business, plus Conceptual Wizards to help you generate detailed estimates from minimal input.

Reduce Takeoff Time by at least 50%
ICE dramatically reduces the time you spend in takeoff freeing you to focus on the real value of your job…finding a competitive advantage. Using a single entry form, ICE's predefined 35 x 35 matrix eliminates manually scrolling through thousands of items. Simply select the components you need and ICE generates the specified items. For rapid takeoff of groups of related work items, Assemblies help you estimate faster with increased accuracy by allowing you to tag takeoff items on the fly. Revolutionary Estimating Wizards allow you to create detailed conceptual estimates with ICE. Using a typical office building as an example, the Estimating Wizards will automatically generate a detailed estimate based on building parameters; length, width, number of rooms, etc. With Estimating Wizards, you help promote standardization within your estimating department while increasing productivity and profits. ICE's takeoff screen gives you instant calculations with live results. Combine that with the ability to change information on the fly and you'll breeze through takeoff like never before!

BIM Integration with BIMC²®
Save even more time by linking design elements to ICE Construction Systems, and let ICE do your measuring and counting!  ICE construction systems simplify BIM Integration by greatly reducing the number of estimating targets that must be addressed. Users of Autodesk’s Revit, Auto CAD Architecture and Auto CAD MEP are able to link design elements to ICE construction systems. Contractors can use the take-off tools in ICE to fine tune estimate pricing and develop final recaps. Estimators can use one single application to do three major functions: 1) review design in 3D; 2) perform automatic quantity takeoff for the entire design model; and 3) automatic estimating using the information in BIM and tagging it with appropriate estimating data.

Visual Takeoff Feature
ICE shows you what it looks like before it hits your estimate, catching errors and omissions before they cost you money!

Do Takeoff Directly From Your Screen!
ICE gives you the ability to do accurate and precise takeoff anywhere without the burden of digitizers and bulky plans. Integrated with On-Screen Takeoff®, ICE allows you to simplify your takeoff process and save hours of manual takeoff labor.  On-Screen Takeoff accepts digital plans in a variety of CAD and image formats.

Digitizer Technology That Really Takes Off
Quickly and accurately digitize areas, perimeters, lengths and counts using our on-screen graphics with colors, fill patterns and your own comments to keep track of what you've done. And best of all, ICE stores these graphics along with your estimate so that if a job 'resurrects' you can go back at any time and see exactly how you took something off. Plus, you can print your takeoff graphics for presentations to clients or to management.

Link with Popular Scheduling and Project Management Systems
ICE allows you to easily set up project schedules, resources, activities and durations by linking with systems like Primavera P6® and Expedition®, and MPS Prolog Manager®.

Improved Project Management and Bid Accuracy using Work Breakdown Structures
Slicing and dicing your estimate has never been easier than with ICE. Sort using any of the 35 user definable WBS codes such as CSI Division, Major Item Code, Minor Item Code, Area, Systems, Item Code, Section, Subdivision, Element, etc. This allows you to see totals of various pieces of an estimate. You can also apply escalation based on any of these sorts. The Section, Subdivision and Work Breakdown Structure Sort Fields allow you to segregate the costs of different geographic or contractual parts of a project. These fields separate cost breakdown for such things as floors of a building, specific rooms on a floor, base bid vs. alternates, etc. These are user-defined fields and are job specific. By assigning quantities and units of measure to any of the summary categories above, you can generate high-level unit prices so you will be able to analyze estimate summary categories and compare estimates based on both summary amounts and unit prices. Each estimate line item can have a code from each of the sort fields associated with it. ICE can sort, print and summarize an estimate according to any combination of them. This allows you to view tilt-up work (Major Item Code) within a Division. The Element would be Exterior Wall Construction within Building Exterior Skin. The Subdivision field could place the work in a certain building and the Section field could represent the Base Bid as opposed to a Bid Alternate. The WBS fields could contain an accounting or job cost cross-reference code or scheduling scheme. Breakout your ICE estimate the way that best suits your needs or your clients' needs.

Bid Metric Jobs with Confidence
With ICE, you will have the power to bid Metric jobs quickly and accurately. Do your takeoff in Metric, price in Imperial, and switch back to Metric. ICE will address both Metric and Imperial using one database. You can toggle to see a line of takeoff in both Metric and Imperial and print reports from the same estimate in both formats. You won't have to know what a cubic meter of concrete costs in place. You can even compare the estimate in Metric and Imperial on the same screen. ICE will also generate unit weight for items, which is useful if shipping is necessary. It's that easy.

Completely Open Data - Cut and Paste Directly Into Excel®
Developed with your estimating needs in mind, ICE gives you completely open data. Created with Microsoft tools, ICE works seamlessly with your favorite Microsoft Office® products and ODBC software. The ability to cut & paste, drag & drop, and seamlessly exchange estimate data with other software is critical to the integration tools designed to save time and eliminate re-keying information. Access and modify your ICE estimate data using products such as Excel®and Access®. Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) links to the most popular scheduling and project management products such as P6 are included which eliminate exporting, translating and importing information or re-keying data such as resources, durations and dollars. With these familiar Microsoft Office® tools, ICE gives you the speed and accuracy you demand with the flexibility you need.

Completely Open Reports
ICE comes with dozens of different reports which focus on the audit trail, price information and bill of materials. Our reports allow you to define levels of detail breakout based on any of the sort fields used during takeoff. The audit trail provided by ICE is unmatched. You can print a Quantity Survey report to show all takeoff done in footings, slabs, masonry, with totals per Construction System. You can also print a Quantity Audit Trail recap report that shows what lines of takeoff generated concrete, brick, pipe, or ductwork and go to that line for corrections if needed. Want to modify the report? No problem. With the MC² Report Designer, ICE allows you to create custom reports to fit your needs. Quickly and easily change fonts, colors, or any aspect of your system reports. That is something you won't get with proprietary report writers. You can also save your reports as PDF's (Portable Document Format). You will be able to easily send them electronically to whomever you choose.

Never worry again about leaving anything out of your conceptual estimates!
ICE walks you through the job using standardized questions and answers. Avoid leaving things out of your estimate by recording assumptions as you make them. Let the system calculate and accumulate quantities, pull prices from your database, and keep up with job breakouts.

ICE's Unit Pricing feature allows you to work with prices at the component, trade, or breakout level, up to four levels deep. For example, you can develop and modify a unit price per square foot of slab, per linear foot of a system run, or per equipment connection.

Using this feature you can:

• Develop budget estimates from previous estimates by changing job-level prices and quantities

• Work with high-level prices and let ICE spread your adjustments to the estimated detail

• Get the benefits of square-foot and budget pricing while keeping the detail of your estimate

• Compare old jobs and use historical pricing for your current jobs

• Have hard, detailed backup for your conceptual and budget pricing

Powerful Industrial Estimating Features - Typical Specs with Touch Takeoff®
ICE uses spec-driven takeoff designed specifically for process piping. Click on a screen icon or touch a button on a pad - it's that easy! Your job specs complete that takeoff by filling in metallurgy, connection, lining, ratings - whatever you need to produce a quality, detailed estimate. What if specs change midway through takeoff? No problem! Just revise your specs and in a matter of seconds your estimate is up-to-date. ICE has all the major types of pipe, fittings, and valves, including carbon steel, stainless, titanium, nickel and nickel alloy, and aluminum. Prices and manhours are stored in easily-updated tables. Labor tables use up to five production rates per item, allowing you to quickly and accurately fine-tune your labor to the actual job conditions. ICE separates pipe specs from insulation specs from heat trace specs from painting specs. This means fewer specs to keep up with and faster estimating - when a pipe run dives low and the insulation changes, just click over to a new insulation spec! Spec maintenance takes on the real world, too. Set up a spec for a repeat Customer or type of work. Copy it over to a new spec to use for a slightly different job. Change it up to suit the new conditions. All with the ease and speed of a spreadsheet!

back to top

Click here for ICE system recommendations