Construction Monitor Website Updates

What's going on with the Construction Monitor Website?
You have probably noticed the new look and feel of our site. We have been updating and improving much of the site and features. We even have a new logo!


We are always trying to provide a better product for our customers, and so we're constantly working on improving and offering tools that fit the bill.
Here are a few new updates you might not have seen yet that we have been hard at work on. 


New Company Report
This isn't so much a new tool as it is a revamp of an old, barely seen, not very functional tool from our old website. The idea around this tool is to be able to find new companies, or companies first pulling permits in a given year. This is a great way to find new working relationships for your company.
This tool lets you just find the new companies, and reduce the amount of time you are spending looking through permit lists for new companies. You can put in ranges of weeks or narrow down to specific construction types to get really powerful lists. 
Want to know every new general contractor who has pulled a permit for a single family home or residential remodel in the first half of the year? The best way to do that is with "New Company Reports".


Simple Statistics
A free offering to all our customers, simple statistics lets you view construction statistics for any of our market areas, up to the first of the previous year (So if its half way through 2011, you will get back to 01/01/2010)
This lets you get snapshots on what is happening in any given area, even outside your current subscription.


New Project Leads
New Project Leads lets you view building permits as they are entered into our system, so you don't have to wait for the publication at the end of the week. The tool has some limitations such as displaying only 50 permits per page and fewer search categories, however we added an "Area" and "Construction Type" filter to the top that will let you modify and see more specific results. This is a very popular tool for those who just can't wait for the finished weekly publication.


Powersearch
Most of the updates to the Powersearch are ones you won't see, but we hope you take advantage of them anyway. First we've increased the speed of the tool and that allowed us to increase the record limit to 5,000 results per search.
The other updates are a little more hidden, but we think people will find them very useful. 
One option people have requested was a better way to do "multi-select" searches. We aren't yet able to provide that functionality in all the places we want, like construction types, but we have implemented it in some areas, such as Permit Description, City, and Zip Code. These all support putting in comma separated lists.


So say you want to find all permits in only Los Angeles, Irvine & Long Beach. 
You would put them in like this:  los angeles,irvine,long beach 
(avoid a space before or after a comma).


This is a great way to really drill down to just those permits you are looking for. We've also added additional sort options so you can view the results in the order or manner that works best for your needs.