We’re dedicated to helping construction companies reach their full potential. With a team of experienced professionals who have walked in your shoes, we understand the challenges you face and offer tailored solutions to address them.
We’re dedicated to helping construction companies reach their full potential. With a team of experienced professionals who have walked in your shoes, we understand the challenges you face and offer tailored solutions to address them.
How much does a cubic yard of asphalt weigh? How about a cubic yard of concrete, or a cubic yard of clean stone? What about processed stone or graded aggregates? You probably have that number in your head for what you use and can access this easily.
What about your team? Are they using the same number? In some parts of the country, asphalt is calculated at 110 pounds per square yard at one inch thick. Some parts 115 is the number. In others 120 is used.
If you hire an estimator that is using different numbers than your own, the ramifications can be devastating. Setting these and many other standards will ensure everyone in your company will be using the same numbers for conversions so errors will be minimized.
Is waste included in those numbers? Would waste be added at the end? If so how much and in what situation? Does it have waste already and waste is added thereby wasting the waste? A customer once found out through one of our audits that they wasted the wasting waste!
The takeoff technician was instructed to add 5% automatically. The junior estimator added 3% on their own and the chief estimator added 4% in the estimate! This compounded the amount of material in the estimate and lost them several jobs.
These situations and others like it are addressed by our standardization sheet that addresses estimating quantities based upon your companies’ requirements. Local information can be provided and adjusted as you see fit.
For something as straight forward and ubiquitous, the abbreviations a company uses will have impact on many different aspects of their systems and processes.
Does your company use TN or TON? How about SqFt vs SF? This impacts little in the immediate view, however what about a search for a unit? In the commonly used word processing and spreadsheet programs one can search for a set of characters. Without exact matches, these will not be found.
If they do not match exactly, estimating programs will not perform to their maximum efficiency. HeavyBid will not transfer quantities from activities to resources. Bid2Win will create another resource.
How do you abbreviate Excavation? Exc or Ex? The same issue exists with word abbreviations and the impacts can be far reaching. Some State DOT’s list all the important information at the end of the Item description. When you have limited view, you must shorten the description to see the pertinent information. What abbreviations still convey the understandable description while providing the required detail?
How about bringing someone new into the office? Would you have them guess at your company standard abbreviations only to have to instruct them on this later?
This basic step will eliminate the need for that specific conversation, providing more time for more critical conversations.
Our standardization chart, adjusted as necessary to your requirements is a simple solution to this situation.