{"id":3160,"date":"2020-10-23T11:47:47","date_gmt":"2020-10-23T11:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavybid.ewksol.com\/?p=3160"},"modified":"2020-10-23T11:47:51","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T11:47:51","slug":"my-return-to-estimating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/heavybid.ewksol.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/23\/my-return-to-estimating\/","title":{"rendered":"My Return to Estimating"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  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. <\/li>
  2. I did the takeoff in Excel and probably should have put more upfront time in developing the formulas to save time. <\/li>
  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<\/span>. 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<\/a>
    Conclusion<\/span>: Check out the Estimate Recap Classic <\/em>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. <\/li>
  4. I really depend on the Audit Trail<\/em> throughout the estimate’s lifecycle. Yes this is only a Comprehensive Version<\/em> 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. <\/li>
  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. <\/li>
  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. <\/li>
  7. To indicate a plug price I was comfortable with (and would not get quotes for) I used an indicator of $0.0011. <\/li>
  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. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-heavybid-stuff","category-uncategorized"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/heavybid.ewksol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/heavybid.ewksol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/heavybid.ewksol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heavybid.ewksol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heavybid.ewksol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3160"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/heavybid.ewksol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3166,"href":"https:\/\/heavybid.ewksol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160\/revisions\/3166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/heavybid.ewksol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heavybid.ewksol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heavybid.ewksol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}