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Our Story

Methvin’s story is really CEO Richard Gush’s story and it goes all the way back to a corner of South Africa. Richard was born and raised in South Africa. He attended school in Gauteng (Previously known as Jo’burg) and went on to college (Cape Technicon) to graduate in Civil Engineering in 1991. 

A large body of water with a city in the backgroundDescription automatically generated

At the beginning of his career, Richard was lucky to work on a number of really exciting jobs all over South Africa that included the N1 Huguenot tunnel, Dams in Mpumalanga, redevelopment of the National highway through the Garden Route and a deployment to Malawi to build the highway between Lilongwe and Blantyre. 

It was during a secondment working away from home on the Garden Route in 1999 that the course of Richards life would be altered forever. One Friday on his 400km drive home, Richard and two of his team were involved in a serious car accident. During the 7 months that he spent recovering from this accident, to help with his recovery, his father encouraged him to redirect his attention and downtime and go on a Microsoft coding course. 

Not long after completing this course, in 2001 Richard with his wife Cheryl and their two small children immigrated to Auckland New Zealand to start a new life. 

Direct Enrollment Program in Aukland, New Zealand | API Abroad

Here in New Zealand Richard has worked for a number of the large construction companies as a Project Engineer and Project manager. In 2008 with a slump in the market he found himself working away from his family in Melbourne Australia for a year. The year away from his family reminded him of what is important, and on returning he applied for his first fixed desk job. 

While working in South Africa, lots of the responsibility for pricing had often sat with him as the Engineer, this however would be his first role as Estimator and he brought with him to the bid table his extensive project management knowledge.  It wasn’t long into his first role when he realised that for a lot of companies it was more “guess-timating” than Estimating and he started to bed down first principle pricing philosophies and formula’s to his own pricing schedules. Through his experience in using a number of estimating solutions Richard continually ran into issues around collecting, collating and sharing data. Not being that person to leave a problem unsolved Richard built his first rudimentary software program to resolve these issues in 2002. 

In 2015, with seed investments of just over $100,000.00 and a team of programmers recruited globally to work remotely, Methvin has grown to this incredible package that includes all facets of both Bid and Project management. While nothing short of miraculous when you consider what IT development can cost, it is testament to exceptional focus and planning with the use of great tools.

Since building this first iteration of Methvin himself, the program has seen more than 10 evolutions with the help of his global remote team. 

Richards I.T scrum team include programmers in Germany, India, Pakistan and Auckland, and his server support team is split between the United States and Australia. Richard really has put his money where his mouth is in terms of taking his whole business online, and, it has been safer and faster since he did this 3 years ago. 

In 2020 Methvin launched their newly developed website and full Agile application for construction, It was actually through the use of Agile and its facilitation of constructive team relationships that Richard saw it would be invaluable to construction teams who often have adversarial relationships with both subcontractors and clients. 

This shared space model and the contained cost it offers is the “why” Methvin exists. Richards determination to enable a more profitable route (enabled through better estimation) for the construction of infrastructure is what garners his determination to offer this product as cheaply as is possible. It is our hope that smaller subcontractors find better profitability through less guess work as well.

What is incredible is that all of this development has happened afterhours and on weekends and it speaks to a deep commitment to moving through the competitive complexity to offer something better to the industry. 

Methvin in the last year has gained visibility and the number of registered users has grown quite significantly to between 40 and 50 each week.

The number of calls to train up Estimators both locally here in Auckland and overseas via zoom or Skype accelerates monthly. Richards commitment to enabling these teams is demonstrated in making himself available to help teach where he can. 

Training 3

In addition to these remote development teams Methvin has relied on the expertise of members of advisory teams to help establish several initiatives around proper IT scripting, Marketing and Customer Experience. The use of these advisory teams help us to contain development costs, and bring a unique insight from a broader market experience that might otherwise be less broad or insightful. 

We hope that you find our redeveloped web experience a good experience and that you find what you need here. We would love to hear from you so please feel free to drop us and email or book some time online with Richard.

Development Timeline

06 April 2023

Version 7.4

New Takeoff Tool

Introducing our new Takeoff Tool - the ultimate solution for construction professionals! Our tool comes packed with amazing features that will take your estimating process to the next level. Here's a sneak peek:

  1. Parent-child capability: Our tool allows you to develop your Schedule of Quantities (SoQ) and project Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) simultaneously. This means you can save time and increase efficiency!
  2. Linked tables: The Estimate Schedule of Prices (SoP) and Takeoff Schedule of Quantities (SoQ) are now combined into one, making your life even easier.
  3. Client bid form: Say goodbye to the hassle of sending quotes back and forth. With our client bid form, you can send your quote directly from Methvin!
  4. Customizable equations: We know that everyone has their own way of doing things, which is why we've given you the power to insert your own equations into each measure.
  5. Duplicate feature: This amazing feature allows you to use one particular measure in a range of different measures. For example, the area of a road can be duplicated and used for the base course and sub-base course.
  6. Cutout feature: Need to remove the window area from a total wall area? No problem! Our cutout feature makes it easy to do just that.

Don't settle for less when you can have the best. Upgrade to our Takeoff Tool today and take your estimating process to new heights!

06 April 2023

29 July 2021

Version 7.3

Publish Tender

  1. We have now moved from our beta to a production version of the publish tender module.
  2. With a first to market capability that allows you the contractor to forward the clients schedule of quantities(SoQ) through to your subcontractors for them to price up their trades directly to you.
  3. Each addendum to the schedule of quantities(SoQ) is tracked and traced individually, this helps you follow the changes made by the client easily.
  4. We have now incorporated an automated subcontractor adjudication form, saving you data entry time, which allows for a side by side comparison
  5. By tracking you forward work, potential opportunities and tender requests in one place nothing is lost

11 May 2021

Version 7.2

Estimating module

  1. The performance of the work breakdown structure filter has been improved
  2. We now display the project net and gross totals at the top of the SoP
  3. The cross reference resource schedule load substantially faster
  4. Our new recalculate scrip is 4 time faster
  5. The user can now assign a worksheet of multiple line items, so that any change to that worksheet will automatically updated throughout the project

11 May 2021

22 April 2021

Version 7.1

Publish Tender

  1. We have now moved from our beta to a production version of the publish tender module.
  2. With a first to market capability that allows you the contractor to forward the clients schedule of quantities(SoQ) through to your subcontractors for them to price up their trades directly to you.
  3. Each addendum to the schedule of quantities(SoQ) is tracked and traced individually, this helps you follow the changes made by the client easily.
  4. We have now incorporated an automated subcontractor adjudication form, saving you data entry time, which allows for a side by side comparison
  5. By tracking you forward work, potential opportunities and tender requests in one place nothing is lost

20 January 2020

Version 6

New Features

Estimating module

Automate the recalculate function as you make changes.  Added a new export to excel option that inserts a blank line between each line item on exporting to excel for the SoP and Client SoP reports.  Allow the user to add text into the SoP amount cell (i.e. Included or excluded for clarity in reporting).  A user prompt pop up when deleting more than one item to allow you to enter the number of records to be deleted.  Allow standard maths functions i.e ^, if (2>5)

{yes}

else

{no}

, +%, *% and =.  Inclusion of the ability to use short keys to indent (ctrl + ->) and outdent (ctrl + <-) on all tables.  An automated email is sent to the user with a dump of all the reports, when they reach 75, 90 & 98% complete. This is a safety net in the event you don’t have access to our server and you have a tight deadline.

Agile | Project Management

Complete new design of the workspace board.  Designed a new dashboard window.  Ability to set contracts or agreement between parties.  Incorporated a new list of “My tasks”.  Developed a progress tracker with graphical interface.

Fixes

Improved the stability for Importing from excel.  Resolved the loss of complex resource detail when copying from master.  The issue while tabbing through the resource grid and adding data has been resolved.  Fix the gross rate and amount rounding issue.  Resolve the global variables not updating issue.  Percentage complete logic has been improved.  Improvement to the duplicate resource script run time.  General improvements to all reports and export to excel function.

20 January 2020

16 August 2019

Version 5

Estimating module

Include complex resources in the resource table.  Ability to develop a Sub-schedule for an individual SoP item.  Include text inside equations to help read/review the estimate

Agile | Project Management

Document registration with date stamping and revision history.  File directory and filter system

Takeoff Tool

Added capability for producing endarea earthworks takeoffs.  Slope/pitch correction for roof measures

Gantt Scheduler

Included the ability to set an unlimited number of baseline programs.  Integrated a calendar for each individual resource

01 April 2019

Version 4

Estimating module

Allow copy and paste from a client’s excel SoP into metvin.  Include text editing.

Agile | Project Management - Stable Release

Kanban board: Visual card system.  Assign tasks to project members.  Add the ability to set deadlines.  History tracking module.  Ability to add subtasks to a task.  Incorporated Tag feature.

Takeoff Tool

Incorporate a materials list for each measure.  Add the wall measurement feature.

Gantt Scheduler - Stable Release

Closed out bugs

01 April 2019

05 February 2018

Version 3

Estimating module

Allow SoP items to link to the same pricing worksheet.  The ability to use multiple currencies for resources.Takeoff Tool - Stable Release

Agile | Project Management - Beta

Gantt Scheduler - Beta

12 January 2017

Version 2

Estimating module - Stable Release

Deployed a stable version of the estimating application.  Developed a secure permanently logged in feature.

Takeoff Tool - Beta

Set the drawing scale module.  Measure areas, perimeters, length and count elements in both imperial and metric.  A list of materials and their thicknesses can be added to every takeoff.

12 January 2017

08 July 2016

Version 1

Estimating module

Collaborative online estimating application.  First Principles estimating software.  Variable and equation driven worksheets.  Complex resources.  Multiple assembly capability.

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