Hi folks,
As I mentioned in an earlier thread, I’ve just started with a small remodeling company in Mpls. after about 10 years on my own. I always worked on a time and materials basis, so I never had to perfect the art of estimating.
At my current company we use the Hometech system categories in an excel spreadsheet that our primary estimator has built. It’s fine for doing detailed line-by-line estimates, but way too much for coming up with ballpark “free” estimates. We charge for the line-by -line stage and incorporate it with the design fee.
But it seems to me we could really use some sort of simple ballpark estimating software for the first stage in order to see if we are “in the same church”. Is there something out there that you can punch in your labor burden, general quality level (economy, builder-grade, better, premium..), project parameters, and get a reasonable ballpark number? Has anyone tried the Turtle Creek product? Maybe I’m dreaming…
Steve
Edited 4/28/2002 6:21:24 PM ET by STEVENZERBY
Edited 4/28/2002 6:23:56 PM ET by STEVENZERBY
Edited 4/28/2002 6:24:30 PM ET by STEVENZERBY
Replies
I guess if you build a couple of dozen ballparks each year, it would help if you could automate the process.
The San Diego Padres are building one now - actually the city is building it for them - and its the same thing over and over again: grass, pitchers mound, stands, bathrooms, vast parking lots and a broadcasting booth. Add lighting for night games.
-Peter
Steve I pretty regularly use the Speedy Reckoner section of the HomeTech estimating book to produce ball park estimates. Am I to understand that you are using HomeTech data but not the book? If so then try that section of the book. I've been using that data and placing it when ever a new project comes up in a FileMaker database system that will eventually fully automate the ballparking process for me but at the present time I only have maybe 15-20% of the Speedy Reckoner data inputed so far. In other words when a project comes up that requires a cetain set of data then I enter it and that's why I've only gotten a modest amount entered to date ( mostly realted to interior work).
I also have Turtle Creeks MacNail and while it does have some parametric qualities to it I think that it still too detailed for quick ballparking use.
"Do not go where the path may lead, go
instead where there is no path and
leave a trail."-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Jerrald,
We have the book and have input a lot of the category items into our line by line excel worksheet. We've created a template that is basically tabs, each one corresponding to a Hometech category. I still do a lot of looking up in the book for stuff, though. I've not taken a very good look at the speedy reckoning part. I will. Thanks.
Steve
Steve -
If your "primary estimator" has come up with an excel spreadsheet for detailed estimates, why couldn't he come up with a "ballpark" spreadsheet?
If you buy a canned software package, you'll spend a lot of time tweaking it to get it to kick out reasonable numbers. You could probably write your own spreadsheet over the same period of time, and not have to worry about buying future software upgrades, etc. and you could tweak things as your labor and material costs changed.
Redneck Extraordinaire