I was in Tennessee last week, and stopped by one of Tennessee’s largest builders to provide some training and suggestions to increase their estimating productivity. One of their senior estimators was new to the company’s Sage Timberline Estimating system, and was struggling to find the best way to make adjustments to their highly-detailed bids. The company builds more than 1,000 semi-custom homes per year, and estimators need to crank out close to 30 estimates per month. So there’s no time for lost productivity. Here’s a quick summary of our takeaways from the training that will help improve estimating efficiency:
- Tip #1: Use and Trust the Database Assemblies: Companies who own top-tier estimating systems typically have invested hundreds of manhours in building detailed estimating assemblies to quantify and collect related construction components. Using well-designed assemblies, especially along with one of the digital takeoff tools will cut quantity takeoff time and item selection in half or better.
- Tip #2: Make Adjustments in Assembly Takeoff. Add related components or adjust assembly quantities from within Assembly Takeoff. This will keep any necessary changes grouped with the other assembly components AND will provide an easy to follow audit trail later for final checks.
- Maintain the Database. If you find any errors or obsolete components in assemblies, call them to the database admin’s attention, or fix them immediately if you have database admin rights. As I reminded Mike in Nashville last week, fixing a small error once saves 10 estimators fixing the same error 10 times, an easy productivity gain.
- Tip #4: When In Nashville, go see Vince Gill at the Ryman. Ok so it’s not an estimating tip but do it anyway, you’ll be glad you did.
