I had the opportunity this week to put together an estimate for a hard bid. I trained the company several months ago but they have been busy and just couldn’t get to HeavyBid and I just love doing takeoffs and estimating. It gives me the opportunity to get back to estimating and use what I teach! I love passing on to estimators efficient workflows. Since this company purchased HeavyBid Cloud it works well for me to jump in but I don’t have the headaches of trying to VPN into another company’s server. HeavyBid Cloud is awesome and is worth consideration. Here are some observations I have after completing the estimate:

  1. This was a marine job so the first thing I did is decide what are the primary equipment to be used. I like to look at means and methods first and equipment is part of that.
  2. I did the takeoff in Excel and probably should have put more upfront time in developing the formulas to save time.
  3. Early on I noted the underrun of most bid quantities. In public bidding understanding how over/underrun quantities affect the estimate is critical. Honest opinion here. I am not a fan of the Chief Estimators Report. Just too much random information that could be better presented. My client didn’t like it either but he really liked the Estimate Recap Classic. Still works after all these years and gave us far better information in a more concise presentation than the Chief Estimators Report but everyone has their preferences. Sample
    Conclusion: Check out the Estimate Recap Classic report. Since about every item had quantity underrun the factoring of Indirect costs was a concern so I used “Spread Overrides” to move indirect costs to items that were lump sum.
  4. I really depend on the Audit Trail throughout the estimate’s lifecycle. Yes this is only a Comprehensive Version feature but worth the price in the long run. I have a record of every change in the estimate and being able to set milestones was really valuable when making changes so I had a starting point. This feature would be hard for me to live without.
  5. To prevent errors always insist the subcontractors bid the units of measure in the bid documents. Drove me nuts as each sub went with a different unit of measure. Since I got this estimate on such short notice there was not a lot of time to contact subs.
  6. To indicate a plug price I used an indicator of 0.099 so if I plugged $100.00 then the price I used was $100.0099. Easy for me to spot a plug number.
  7. To indicate a plug price I was comfortable with (and would not get quotes for) I used an indicator of $0.0011.
  8. In hindsight, I should have used HeavyBid Insights for my customer’s review of the reports. Emailing reports in 2020 just doesn’t make sense.
    Email is a terrible way to communicate digitally considering most companies now have Microsoft Teams.

So that are just a few observations as I get back into the estimator’s chair. No we were not low bidder but it was a good estimate and gave my client an opportunity to see what HeavyBid can do.