Contractors are the first to take advantage of advances in technology when it comes to the actual construction process, but in many cases fall behind when it comes to using computer technology during the estimating process. Many small and not-so-small contractors continue to estimate manually, or use customized spreadsheets to bid their jobs. In other aspects of construction, contractors understand how specialized tools and equipment can increase productivity, but still use a general purpose spreadsheet like Excel to perform the highly specialized calculations required to accurately estimate labor and material.
Contractors who use Excel to prepare their estimates must by necessity become expert users just to set up the complex calculations that come pre-loaded in specialized estimating systems like those available from Accubid. The time spent learning Excel and tweaking spreadsheets is time away from estimating and project management, your true areas of expertise. And no matter how good you get with Excel, the risk of a calculation or data entry error is high.
It’s important to remember that the calculations involved in an accurate estimate go well beyond the simple multiplying of labor rate by hours. An estimate that’s sure to make your company money should take into consideration different installation conditions through labor factoring, and the possibility of increases in labor rates through labor escalation. Incorporating variables like this would stretch any spreadsheet to the limit.
Calculating material costs can be a particularly time-consuming process whether you are using a spreadsheet or estimating manually. Storing lists of all the different material you could possibly require for a job would be your first challenge. Updating and maintaining that list would be your second. Specialized estimating programs like Accubid include specialized material databases containing tens of thousands of items with labor units, tracking codes, and cost codes already defined. Related items are grouped together as assemblies, so that you specify the length or count for the assembly and let the program automatically calculate the required quantity for each component in the assembly. If the same takeoffs are duplicated over multiple floors or systems, a specialized estimating program can automatically repeat your takeoffs according to your specifications.
Now, what if after spending hours entering material into your spreadsheet, you have to make an across-the-board change to one of the items, say substitute a run of 2 - #12 THHN conductors in ½” EMT with a cable run of 12/2 MC cable. With a spreadsheet, you’d basically have to replace the item one at a time everywhere it occurs in your estimate. If you were using a specialized estimating program, you could perform an item substitution and replace the item across a range of takeoffs in a single step.
After you’ve finished entering all the material into your spreadsheet, what then? Do you just assume that everything is correct, or do you perform reasonable checks? To perform reasonable checks, you’d have to be able to break down the entire bid by logical and physical aspects such as floor, system, area, or drawing. Such a detailed breakdown could then be exported into project management software such as Primavera SureTrack or Microsoft Project to produce a preliminary construction schedule. But even if you were smart enough to assign takeoffs to breakdowns within your spreadsheet, how would you sort the takeoffs by different combinations of breakdowns and in different orders? Try getting a spreadsheet to do that.
The most sophisticated spreadsheet you ever developed can never approach the efficiency and flexibility of a specialized estimating program. And in the long run, it’s cheaper to leverage the time already spent by an estimating software company to input and test the data and calculations you need than to do it yourself. Accubid currently has 14,500 users in over 4,300 client companies putting our estimating, change order, and project management software to the test throughout North America. With a user base this size, you know you can count on our proven calculations and road-tested stability.
With a specialized estimating program, you don’t have to spend hours creating and maintaining spreadsheets. Instead, you can spend the time doing what you do best—preparing accurate and detailed estimates.
