I am a small custom builder in TN building a estimaing database for a program I bought. I am curious to know how others (with experience) built their databases. I have detailed records of my labor costs for most tasks(none of which compare to national so called standards). My questions are as follows:
– do you use sq ft or lf for wall assemblies or what combinations?
-do you use any geographic estimate sheets or personal only?
-do you adjust quality standards by % and based on what? I currently base on hourly time to sqft or lf .
-is there any advice you can give to help thru this process?
Needles to say, I cannot afford to do estimates by hand any longer and think that anyone who refuses to learn and use any innovations in our industry is losing pace.
Thank You
Flynn
Replies
Flynn,
While I am a small time handyman on the side my day job is working with databases and information technology. Do you plan on developing an actual database (ex. M.S. Access) or using spreadsheets? I would start creating your database by using what your records are today. Once the data is in place you can write queries to format your data to sq ft, LF, or whatever you choose.
I suggest starting here: http://databases.about.com/ , http://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp , google terms like “relational database design†and look at some basic tutorials of using access and creating basic databases to get you started. If you need some help with this feel free to email me. Good Luck
tn_handyman on re-reading what Flynn wrote it sound to me like he has bought and estimating program and he's wondering about populating the data not necessarily building a database program himself. Still I could be wrong in reading it that way.
However it my own opinion that if a contractor is going to learn databases with the intent of building their own estimating program they are far better off using FileMaker 7 for that purpose than they are MS Access. While i think there is still a significant learning curve involved to really build and effective program the learning curve for FM7 is not nearly as steep or as high as MS Access. And the tools that FM7 provides the user to build a good looking working interface are far superior to the tools that Access provides. Have you checked out and played around with the new FM7? Plus there are plenty of free starter files provided both by FileMaker and other third parties that can be modified by the user for their purposes giving the user a huge head start to get up and running. And if that wasn't enough it runs on Mac and Windows.
Now Flynn what is the program you bought? Not all estimating programs work in the same fashion. They can have very different data acrchitectures so knowing which one you are working with might help if it's something I am or the others here are familiar with.
That said at the risk of being condemned for blatant commercial self promotion I have product designed in FileMaker which I am about to start beta testing which while it can come already populated in it template form (no data) any contractor can use it to build their own custom database based on (and here's a novel concept) their own real costs and productivity rates! It's essentially really just a tool to find and organize all that information, relate it in different ways, and then plug the data into an estimate (or even an Excel spreadsheet). If you'd like to help with the beta testing of the new version e-mail me and I'll tell you when and where it's going to be published so you can download it. You might be interested in using it in it's template form with your data. (Preview Screenshots of the Paradigm-360 Contractors Office).
As for when you say "I have detailed records of my labor costs for most tasks(none of which compare to national so called standards)." I'm wondering just what you mean. What are you comparing to what? Are you comparing costs to the costs in the data books or are you comparing the productivity rates to productivity rate in the data books. I usually and generally recommend against the first part of that, using the costs in the estimating data books but I do however actually recommend in many cases using the productivity rates that they publish as a good starting reference point towards building you own database. It's both a good framework to work from and the productivity rates are generally pretty close to what most companies will really find. However my caveat that I always say when using any published data or even your own empirical data too is that
As for " - do you use sq ft or lf for wall assemblies or what combinations?" well that all depends on the task and/or task group. While estimating using LF for an 8' wall assembly speeds up things a lot it 's also helpful to have line items for just stud or just plates etc. so that you can use them when you need them to customize a task grouping. Estimating wall assemblies by the SF of their surface is okay too but it harder or slower work to then produce a takeoff from that information so why not just work from different assemblies for different wall heights.
"-do you use any geographic estimate sheets or personal only?" Huh? not sure just what your asking there at all.
"-do you adjust quality standards by % and based on what? I currently base on hourly time to sqft or lf ." That depends on what mean by "quality" in that context. Are you talking about the quality difference between a wall framed in KD Douglas Fir vs. one framed in SDRY Hemlock Fir? Both of those walls really take the same time to frame and the difference is in what you are paying for KD Douglas Fir vs. SDRY Hem Fir. If you are talking about different level in the quality of the workmanship then that's something else and worthy of a discussion in and of itself ( In my company we don't and never will have different levels of quality in our workmanship and I think that bad idea so I hope that's not what you meant).
"-is there any advice you can give to help thru this process?" Well keep asking more questions and I am sure people will just in.
" Needles to say, I cannot afford to do estimates by hand any longer and think that anyone who refuses to learn and use any innovations in our industry is losing pace." I couldn't agree with you more. Why so many contractors are still "legal pad" estimators has me flabbergasted. What a waste of their time. Glad to see someone working on improving and streamlining their estimating practices.
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Sorry for the late reply.
The software I bought is "litening fast" estimating which seemed like the best alternative at the time. I did investigate your site having read some of your posts.
My personal crew datbases are based on high end custom trim ,remodeling and building hours. Some of my new estimating has been for commercial remodeling not requiring the same furniture grade quality we are used to, so I have been trying to make up quality standards. Admittedly, reaching out of my typical enviornment to keep a crew busy.
I guess I just feel overwhelmed by all the different processes involved. After re-reading my post I don't think I explained myself very well.
I am a classic guesstimator, usually figuring my jobs backwards from what I think they are worth. The problem of course is I can't always get these jobs ,and with more and more employees I need to be a little more precise in what I am doing.
What I really want to know is how other people estimate using databases, why they do it that way and how they learned it.
Thank you
Flynn
Flynn I don't know much at all about "litening fast" estimating. I can remember it once upon a time being something that a lot of contractors used since I know it was rtecommended to me when I first started out into computerized estimating years ago. I never looked at it at the time though because it was Windows only and I wanted to work from a Mac. In retrospect now making the Mac choice is something I am very very glad I did inspite of it being tough going for a while in what was once almost an exclusivly Windows contractor's software environment.
That aside with respect to what you were saying when you said:
"My personal crew datbases are based on high end custom trim ,remodeling and building hours. Some of my new estimating has been for commercial remodeling not requiring the same furniture grade quality we are used to, so I have been trying to make up quality standards. Admittedly, reaching out of my typical enviornment to keep a crew busy."
If it cost you a different amount of money to build a bankette for a window seat breakfast nook vs. one for a restuarant or tavern on a commercial project you have to define what are the differences between those two different projects? A case in point from our own experience come from a set of bankettes we build for a tavern out of A-C plywood edged with 5/4" x 1-1/2" common pine and then stained and varnished vs. a set for the conference area of a home office we did which were fabricated out of solid glue ups of 5/4" clear pine (seat and iset panel in the back) and #2 Common Pine T&G paneling for the base and sides (to go with the paneling on the wall), all stained and varnished.
In that case you can't just have a base or basic cost for a bankette and have % modifiers for when it's a commerical application vs a residential one. #1 they are two different sets of labor processes so the costs are different there and #2 the material costs are different. And the changes in the two sets of costs are not parametrically tied to each other. In our case the labor involved in the residential bankette was 4.5 times what it was for the tavern job and the materials were 2.25 times as much.
I would say forget about looking at the jobs as being commercial or residential and look at them on their own individual merits. I could very easily see the banquettes we did for the tavern going into a finished basement for a upper middle market home so the distinction isn't commercial vs residential but one of processes between differing products.
"I guess I just feel overwhelmed by all the different processes involved."
It certainly can seem overwhelming at times that's for sure but it is often not nearly as bad as it seems. Ya ever hear of Pareto's Rule?
That applies in a way to estimating in that 80% of your company's revenue will come from 20% of all the activities that your people do or are capable of doing which means 80% of your company activities will represent 20% of things your company can do soooooo..... you don't need to be perfect on estimating everything. You just need to be really good at estimating that 20% of things that takes up 80% of your companies time. Does that make sense? You don't want to ignore or brush off the minor stuff and accuracy is worth working on everywhere but the important thing is to identify the stuff your folks do the most and get that right.
"What I really want to know is how other people estimate using databases, why they do it that way and how they learned it."
In some sense I had it tougher than most estimating when I was getting going because most of what we were doing back then was what I would call Theatrical Spaces and Environments. We were building stuff that the was no precedent for or historical data. We were building things like fake Palm Trees for the insides or restaurants to hide structural columns or interior fish ponds. How do you estimate that stuff? That taught me or should I say forced me to break things down into what's called a Work Breakdown Structure or WBS. Rather than trying to estimate the whole thing in one fell swoop you would estimate a breakdown of multiple process components individually. That way if you were under on one process you might be over on another and then in the end the variances would average out whereas in trying to look at too big a process in one fell swoop could potentially give you one big variance one way or another. The variance on the high end would be great but missing on the low side could put you out of business.
Being forced to break things down into processes back then is a way of thinking I still have today and try to teach the people who work for me and/or with me.
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