Explore key professional estimating tools, their uses, and their importance in today's tech-driven construction industry. Understand how traditional tools like spreadsheets and manual measurements still hold relevance and how they integrate with modern software like Sage Estimating and Autodesk.
Key Insights
- Spreadsheets form the backbone of all estimating, even with the advent of database estimating systems. Proficiency in Excel and Google spreadsheets is crucial as they eventually house all the information for the estimate.
- Database-driven estimating software like Sage Estimating, Autodesk, Navisworks or Autodesk Assemble offer advanced capabilities, enabling estimators to read and extract 3D, 4D and 5D information from Revit or other BIM models.
- While digitization has largely replaced older methods like manual measurements, column pads, and colored pencils, understanding and knowing how to use these traditional tools can prove beneficial in instances without access to modern software.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
Now we're going to talk about professional estimating tools. Here are some of the commonly used tools in the estimating profession.
The backbone of all estimating is the spreadsheet. Even if you're using a database estimating system, it's still considered a type of spreadsheet. Here we're looking at Excel, Google, or other spreadsheets that can be utilized.
All estimators must be proficient at working with spreadsheets regardless of other available tools. Remember one very important thing, Excel is your calculator as well. Since all of the information for the estimate eventually finds its way into Excel, a number of different means of getting that information together start with on-screen takeoff or a digitized software or manual measurements.
That gives us the quantities required to apply unit prices to in order to get our cost for the estimate. The master format is the structure that we'll be using for each item inside the estimate so that it's organized and can be grouped accordingly. Ours means cost data.
We use this to provide the unit costs for each item in the estimate. When it's all said and done, that information needs to be saved in a file format that's reusable and deliverable, such as a PDF or a TIFF file or even an Excel spreadsheet. Other tools worth noting but not necessarily covered in this class are database-driven estimating software such as Sage Estimating.
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Also Autodesk, Navisworks or Autodesk Assemble. This gives you the ability to read and extract 3D, 4D and 5D information from Revit or other BIM models. Minimum requirement for manual takeoff and estimates.
That would be an architect's or engineer's rule or scale for takeoff. Colored pencils or markers for takeoff. Column or pad with at least five columns or nine or more recommended.
In essence, column or pad is like a Excel spreadsheet that doesn't calculate itself. So every time you make a change in a column or pad, you must change all the subtotals and totals that go along with it. Whatever you do, don't make any mistakes in your column or pad because it'll take you a while to fix it.
This is how it was done for many years, up till about 30 years ago. Now we have spreadsheets. So it's just as important to understand how to place your information, your quantity information inside of your Excel spreadsheet.
It's the old-fashioned way of doing things that has been replaced by many new software technologies. But it's always still available to use if you're ever without those tools. You can see in the image that we have here that there's a digital plan with the takeoff already done where they are colored in automatically.
This is how it's done today with digital plan takeoff that has replaced the color pencils, the erasers, as well as the column or pads. In the next video, we'll talk about estimating spreadsheets.
