A feature I did not notice is how HeavyBid now fills in the crew productivity and productivity factor if the estimator fills in one of the productivity information fields. I see estimators who have not come up through any formal estimating training just fill in the crew hour field and not put in the productivity factor. This is a bad habit. Now if the activity codebook is setup correctly these two fields should be filled in automatically but many users don’t have an activity codebook setup. If your company does not make the estimator either fill in the information fields Units/Hour, Units/Shift or Shifts and the corresponding productivity factor and rate will automatically be filled in. This makes the estimator start thinking about a productivity rate instead of just guessing at total crewhours. Try this out. Leave the “Prod” and “Rate” blank and proceed to one of the fields as shown below.