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Are the hours you spent estimating rewarding? Has your estimating productivity increased in recent years? Can you point to more accuracy in your estimates, with higher-quality information? Your competitors can answer ‘Yes’ to those questions (and more). Here’s one expert’s look at what’s possible—today!

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In 25 years of working to “automate” electrical estimating and related tasks, our company has yet to meet a contractor or estimator who got into this business with the fervent hope that he or she would be able to spend more and more time at a computer keyboard.

We’ve also not yet met a single electrical or datacom contractor who goes to work every day for the sheer joy of creating estimates.

While producing software tools to do the job is our main business, we never forget that estimating is a necessary piece of what electrical and datacom contractors do. Our company was founded by an electrical contractor. We’ve never forgotten that estimating is a necessary step in obtaining the work itself (a thing that drives many contractors)—and ultimately realizing a profit from a completed project (something all contractors enjoy)!

However, successful contractors never treat the estimate as a hurdle to be overcome. A question that every contractor answers, one way or another, is: How effective are the time, resources, and people dedicated to estimating?

Is estimating about counting? We hope not. Is it solely about meeting the customer’s needs? Down that path one finds ruin. There’s a lot more involved than simply pumping numbers into a computer program at a high rate of speed.   

What can be gained?

Today’s smartest electrical and datacom contractors put to work a variety of tools and ideas that help them to create:

• faster and easier work for estimators (and contractors);
• more accurate estimates;
• high-quality estimates that lead to better jobsite productivity; and
• higher customer satisfaction.

We hesitate to call this “state of the art” estimating technology. For one thing, there’s more than technology involved; the contractor’s mindset – or, if you’d rather, the “company culture” – is part of the deal. For another, “state of the art technology” can be an off-putting phrase; it could be interpreted as meaning one must be “on the bleeding edge” to gain such advantages.

As you’ll see in this article, it’s not necessary to stretch one’s capabilities to adopt technology options. We’ll outline the ideas, strategies, and tactics savvy contractors and estimators use in 2004 (not some future day).

You’ll read about real-world contractors and estimators who are not "technologists" (or, even, geeks!). These electrical and datacom professionals are more “common sense” than “cutting edge.” Note: While our company, McCormick Systems, does supply the software products that help in these processes, it is fair to note here that we’re not alone in this.

What’s the goal?

Many contractors have obtained perspective on electrical estimating in recent years from their ventures into the datacom or VDV business. Some have acquired smaller datacom companies; others have hired estimators who formerly worked solely for datacom contractors.

What perspective?   They get a look at how business might be conducted without hard-working, specialized estimating software.

“Most of the estimators in the data market have never before been involved in the construction industry,” explains President Dan Palmer of Tri-City Electric Company (Davenport, Iowa). In its growth and expansion, Tri-City Electric has pursued VDV work, which has necessitated hiring data-oriented estimators from outside of the electrical industry.

“Many, if not most, come from big nationwide cabling companies or the telecom industry. From what we’ve seen, many of them use spreadsheets to do their estimates—and that gives us an advantage.

“Our data estimators were first involved in the construction industry and later in the data industry, so they have years of experience in both areas.”

Why? Spreadsheet estimating is missing key ingredients! “Computerized estimating is so simple and we use it every day,” Palmer notes. “Instead of a unit price, our systems give us a cost for the material and a labor cost. Heck, we’re electrical contractors—we do modern estimating day-in and day-out.”

Tom Lanum, senior estimator for Tri-City Electric, has seen the difference between estimating approaches. “For us, a unit priced estimate does not offer us labor and

materials tracking, which we routinely expect from our estimating software. When we talk with a VDV estimator who has joined the Tri-City Electric Co. team from another contractor, we introduce them to McCormick system software and explain the benefits and its user-friendly ability to estimate.

“You can actually watch them, as they appreciate what can be done. A little light comes on. At some point, they realize—or even say out loud—“this is going to make my life a lot easier!”

Get more estimates?

“Productivity” is a watchword in today’s economy. Contractors are focused on field worker output, of course; but estimating productivity is just as important.

Why? Are we talking about taking an estimator or group of estimators and pushing them to do 25% more estimates in a given month? Well, yes—but the approach isn’t to buy a whip, hire a slave driver, and keep people chained to their desks 75 hours a week!

When contractors break down estimator tasks, they come up with a short list of vital functions:

• counting and double-checking quantities;
• integrating materials prices;
• “laboring” the job—putting labor hours against tasks;
• coping with special elements (every job has some of these); and
• finalizing the numbers before the competitive bid or estimated price (on negotiated work) is due.

Estimating software automates every one of these elements, increasing speed and accuracy and even helping contractors and estimators gain perspective on the numbers contained in the estimate. But there’s more.

In an ideal world, the estimate –whether put together by someone who specializes as an estimator or a project manager who also estimates electrical jobs – would almost take care of itself. At some point in assembling the estimate, this key person would put his or her feet up on a desk and stare out a window!

Stare out a window?

Yes. Every contractor knows there’s a lot more to building a job electrically than assembling a skilled workforce and truckloads of tools, equipment, and installable materials in the same place.

Modern tools enable an estimator to create the time to think about how the job can be built—and how that could be improved. The thinking changes the estimate, making it a document that produces more than a bottom-line price. Field productivity can be maximized . . . along with profitability.

Of course, the claim of “creating more thinking time” here does not preclude producing more estimates. With the functions automated as detailed above, complete estimates on routine jobs (which might require less brain time) can be produced on an accelerated basis.

Save more time?

We outlined the end in the section above without detailing the means. In our experience, contractors care about the end-product, but they’re very much aware of “the devil in the details.”

Before submitting a bid, they will “play” with the bottom-line number – at least in their mind. It’s not easy to do that if the contractor is at the same time wondering about the process that led to that number!

Counting – as we all know, contractors have submitted bids with miscounts of things such as lighting fixtures and datacom drops. Others have come in very low (getting that sickening feeling at the bid opening, when the next-lowest number to their $337,000 is $575,000!). It’s not unusual for an estimator to miss a major job element, be it some switchgear or a group of motors.  

Is there a way to prevent this? The interface of computer-aided design and electrical/datacom estimating, which we call CAD Estimating, goes a long way to ensuring the materials element of an estimate is squeaky clean. See the accompanying story, “Let The Machine Do The Counting,” for more on this.

Materials prices – a few years ago, the state-of-the-art was using a pricing service and then multiplying the materials column total by a number (0.99 or less), a “guesstimate” at savings the contractor could realize in the real world of materials purchasing. Today, while many contractors still use pricing services; others get prices directly from local distributors, updated to today’s real-world number for each item via computer.

Labor hours – savvy contractors use assemblies. Users of our company’s system painstakingly create customized databases. Built up over time, these assemblies are updated, adapted to special needs of specific jobs, and used and re-used time and again. Making it easier to create and use assemblies – catering to contractor needs – has been a major task for McCormick Systems and its competitors. See the “Networking & Databases” short item nearby

Special elements – special one-time items, temporary items, and unique assemblies seem to be a part of every job.   Mark Jackson, chief estimator for E-J Electrical Installation Co. of New York City, recently told us about the company’s work on the revamp of the Hayden Planetarium in Manhattan.

“Basically, they built a globe containing two theaters, and surrounded it with a glass box,” says Jackson. “From the outside, it’s wonderful. We were in there from the time they tore it down. We put in the heavy feeders and did the entire new structure.

“And let me tell you, there isn’t a straight piece of conduit in the whole job! Like this one, most of our jobs aren’t production jobs.”

For the Hayden Planetarium, he notes, “there were perhaps 200 items that are just not going to be in your regular database. Our estimators have to go in and physically customize these items for these jobs . . . [fortunately] this is very easy to do.”

Going final – David DeFelice (Davidson Electric, Martin’s Ferry, Ohio) reviews jobs using the “universal” feature built in to his software. He spends a lot of time with the estimate after it’s complete, using his estimating software’s capabilities to perform “what-if” analyses on different approaches to the job. “On a given job, we might perform

five different extensions,” he says. “I want to see where the job falls if I try X, and where it goes if I try Y. Doing that helps me.”

Recent improvements in the software, he notes, have enabled him to do this while saving time.

What is standard?

Electrical and datacom contractors today have numerous options to improve the way they communicate, compute, and manage their businesses. Short pieces that accompany this article provide highlights of additional options.

Essentially, electrical/ datacom estimating software vendors such as McCormick offer a wide and expanding a la carte menu to contractors. While we market a single system with a number of options, there seem to be as many unique ways to adopt and use technology as there are contractors.

One last example: Our software includes scheduling and graphing modules; these are not extras, but are “embedded” in the system. Over time, we’ve had many contractors ask us to add such items—even though their computers already had these capabilities.

            What that proves to us, as estimating software experts, is:

• Not all contractors need every technology solution. Some of those requesting the “add” of scheduling software, for example, were long-time users.
• Contractor needs change over time. Customer demands, management needs, internal technology savvy—there are all kinds of drivers.
• It’s become obvious to us that electrical and datacom contractors will adopt new software ideas faster and with more enthusiasm as they come to see these “solutions” as tools.

While no contractor or estimator began a career in the electrical and/or datacom businesses to spend a full day at a computer keyboard, today’s modern approach to estimating provides a much higher return on time invested in such work. Stay tuned! We’re still at work making your job easier, faster, and more rewarding!

McCormick is President of McCormick Systems of Chandler, Ariz. (www.mccormicksys.com), the nation’s leader in estimating software.

Let The Machine Do The Counting!

Human beings are incredible creations. We created “black holes” with our minds – and found them with radio telescopes! Yet the most elemental tasks, such as taking off an electrical project, can lead to cataclysmic mistakes. Estimating is truly a thankless job. No parades are held honoring estimators who, time after time, produce spot-on accurate material counts. But if the estimator misses a piece of switchgear, or somehow omits five floors of lighting fixtures from an office building estimate – the negative result can be huge . . . from just one little error. That’s why the gradual move to electronic blueprints—computer-aided design (CAD)—holds within it much promise for electrical contractors. A module that produces an interface between electrical estimating software and CAD drawings (McCormick’s is called CAD Estimating) produces extremely accurate counts. What’s involved: The estimator “teaches” the module what the drawing’s specific symbols “mean.” This gets easier over time, as the software “learns” what more and more standard symbols stand for. With this knowledge, the module then produces, in seconds, all of the necessary counts. Additionally, it spits out a list of symbols that you omitted from your “teaching.” That list helps you to find any possible omissions from your estimate. Many electrical contractors have CAD “seats” – especially those involved in design-build work. Others have purchased CAD equipment because, these days, “normal” electrical drawings can require so much “filling in the blanks” by contractors. With an interface between estimating software and the CAD machine (there are others besides McCormick’s), a contractor is well on his or her way to reducing estimating errors to an absolute minimum.

Handheld Computers Offer Speed & Flexibility

Wearing the mantle of “technology leader” in electrical estimating software has driven McCormick Systems to lead its contractor customers into the world of handheld computing. Two productivity-boosting products are now available on personal digital assistants (PDAs): Remote take-off Estimators working on renovations of existing buildings can sometimes come up short. They visit the site. They take measurements. They look for opportunities. All of the information they glean from a walk-through ends up on paper – sometimes, on several pieces of paper. Paper can get lost. Handwritten notes might not be completely legible. When it's time to transcribe the notes and incorporate the vital site-gathered information into the estimate, something can (and does) get "lost in the translation." With the Remote Take-Off product, estimating software is loaded onto a PDA. The estimator takes the handheld to the site and enters real quantities into the software he or she regularly uses (and will use to complete the estimate later). No tough-to-read scrawls; no lost pieces of paper. What’s more, the button on the PDA is converted into a counter, so the estimator can do counts right there – on-site! Remote workorder Technicians and electricians working off of service trucks can use handheld computers with T-Bill software. The worker can generate service information at the customer’s site—and even get the customer to sign the work order. If the contractor chooses to take advantage of wireless capabilities, the work order can be wirelessly transmitted back to the office. If desired, the system can be set up so that the customer receives a fax copy of work order immediately – while the service tech is still at the site!

Assemblies: One Key To Estimating Productivity

TakeOff 16 is a company that specializes in estimates—doing the work, for example, for electrical contractors that lose a key staffer to illness or have taken on more work than their current staff can handle. Stanley Shook, who founded the company in 1998, uses full-time and part-time specialists to produce speedy, accurate estimates for his customers. One feature of modern estimating software that speeds his work, Shook notes, “is the multiple take-off windows. I can open up five or seven screens, each one showing a different item or assembly to choose from. This allows us to count so much faster. “Also, the feature of creating temporary job items and assemblies is very fast and simple. This is a very critical thing for us, especially when we use the part-time estimators. It is so much easier to maintain our database.”

Networking & Databases – One Job, Many Estimators!

Every vendor says it offers software that can be networked. As it turns out, there are several kinds of networking. Contractors who pursue large jobs – and are not given a lot of time by customers to come up with a price – often split a given job up between several estimators. One estimator might do only the lighting, another might handle just the special systems   (VDV, fire alarm, and such) – and so on. With one type of networking, the estimates interface in real-time. In the other kind, nothing of the sort happens. At Commonwealth Electric of the Midwest, which has 500 employees working out of six offices, a major recent development was moving to a multi-user networked system. Matt Firestone, chief estimator, took the opportunity to standardize estimating operations. “Over time, everyone had tinkered with the database. At one time, we had a lot of different databases – perhaps close to a dozen! We didn’t have consistency across the company,” Firestone explains. Today, the company’s estimating software is networked – with its Lincoln, Neb., HQ in communication with offices in Omaha and Des Moines, Iowa. “I’m able to modify the database from my desktop,” Firestone notes. Compared to the earlier set-up, “we have a tremendous advantage now, with everyone on the same database,” he claims. “We ran into problems the old way. If someone modified his database, we wouldn’t back up a job on one machine and run it on another. “Now, we can move a job or split up jobs between estimators, and we know we are working with the same information when we compare one job to the next.” With truly networkable software and a single database, the company can split a large job up between two or more estimators – and get back a result that “comes together” . . . automatically!