For years, NaDonte Jones did estimates the old-fashioned way by poring over blueprints and using different-colored highlighters to categorize various materials needed for jobs, then price them out.
“I’d manually input all of that information,” says Jones, owner of NJ Jones Plumbing in Syracuse, New York. “Doing it the old-school way was very tedious. With everything else I had to do, it might take me a couple of weeks to develop a bid for, say, a large, $1 million project.”
But these days, Jones works smarter, not harder, thanks to Design Estimating Pro software from McCormick Systems (a Foundation Software company). The estimating software enables him to develop job estimates in hours, he says.
Getting on the right track
As a troubled 19-year-old serving a 10-month stint in a county jail in Syracuse, New York, NaDonte Jones knew he needed to steer his life in a different direction. And after taking a building trades class during his incarceration, which spanned 1996 and 1997, Jones realized that plumbing could very well be the vehicle for making that life-changing U-turn.
Jones’ hunch proved to be correct. Today, the master plumber owns NJ Jones Plumbing, based in Syracuse. (The “NJ” stands for the initials of his first name and middle name, JuJuan.) Established in 2014, the company employs 12 people (including seven technicians), runs four service vehicles and generated about $2 million in revenue in 2024.
Furthermore, in 2019, CenterState CEO, a regional economic-development agency, and the Upstate Minority Economic Alliance named NJ Jones Plumbing the area’s Minority Business of the Year.
“I’d always wanted to open some kind of business,” says Jones, who dabbled in promoting concerts and also ran a barber shop for a while. “Once I got my master plumbing license, I knew I’d start my own business.”
Equipment roster
The company owns four service vehicles: two Ford F-150 pickup trucks and two Nissan NV 2500 cargo vans.
To handle small drain cleaning jobs, the company owns Model C sectional cable machines from Electric Eel Manufacturing; a drum cable machine from Spartan Tool; a J-3055 waterjetting machine (3,000 psi at up to 5.5 gpm) from General Pipe Cleaners (a division of General Wire Spring Co.); and General Pipe Power-Vee handheld drain machines.
The company also invested in a RIDGID SeaSnake microReel pipeline-inspection camera and a M12 M-Spector Flex inspection camera from Milwaukee Tool. For power tools, Jones prefers Milwaukee Tool, DeWalt, Kobalt, RIDGID and Bosch, plus concrete saws from Husqvarna.
In addition, Jones prefers fixtures from Moen, water heaters from A.O. Smith, tankless water heaters from Navien and toilets made by Mansfield, Sloan Valve Co., American Standard and Kohler Corp.
Jones relies heavily on the aforementioned estimating software from McCormick, which has improved efficiency and dramatically reduced the amount of time he spends on developing job estimates.
Time-saver
Jones says he used to avoid larger jobs because of the time it took to create estimates.
“The most I would do was an estimate for plumbing a small house,” he says. “But with this software, I can quickly do takeoffs for large projects, like a school remodeling project or a new large home or commercial building. It’s helped me tremendously to get more work and be more profitable.”
Using the software is so much faster because Jones can upload digital blueprints into his computer. Then he uses a mouse to point-and-click on various materials and components needed for a job — pipes, fixtures, couplings and the like. The software then automatically calculates the project costs, including the labor rate, he says.
“I’d estimate it cut the time I spent doing estimates by 80% to 90%,” Jones says. “That’s critical because I’m still the mouth of the bottle — everything goes through me. So I can’t be sitting around too long screwing around with estimates. I need to focus more on day-to-day operations — get out in the field, making sure things are getting done.”
Sweet deal
Jones says he paid a one-time $3,000 fee for the cloud-based software and also pays an annual subscription fee of $700.
The software includes a fully loaded, prebuilt plumbing database for any type of project, including residential, commercial and industrial work. The software’s database features more than 40,000 items and 20,000 prebuilt assemblies for fixtures, as well as provides built-in material costs and labor units. For an additional fee, the system will automatically update the prices of materials, based on data from popular supply houses.
“It’s a great deal,” Jones says. “I’ve been using it for five or six years and have probably captured $3 to $5 million worth of work with it.”
