I am in a lot of offices (even with the pandemic). A good estimator will have all the little details of the construction process that insures their estimates are accurate. I remember at one of the first trainings this year sitting at Diamond Coring’s office in Chicago, a company that specializes in microgrooving and concrete repair, and listening to their senior estimator go over each facet of one of their operations. Huge amount of information and so critical to producing good accurate estimates that ultimately produces a profit for the company. The crisis I see coming for construction companies is a lot of estimators around the country are close to retirement and all this information that they retain (in their head) will leave with them. So here is how a company can pass on this knowledge so the next generation doesn’t have to learn the same information the hard way. Start scheduling with the senior estimator(s) time where they put in notes in the Activity Codebook that will serve as a checklist for estimators. If it was my company I would offer the soon-to-be retiring estimator a bonus for let’s say every 10 activities they add notes to. The bonus will be pennies compared to the value of the information. I would also do this before the estimator retires so there is time urgency to this project. When the activity is brought in the estimate their knowledge of that activity would be listed in the notes.

Note not enough? There is also the HeavyBid Checklist that would be useful for more complex biditems. I covered this in a blog and video – see the Link below.

LINK

So get to work as the crisis I refer to in this blog can be prevented.