Hey folks,
I have been tasked with researching construction Estimating software for my employer and providing a recommendation for our organizations needs.
I'm looking for any suggestions, reviews, feedback etc from anyone who may be working in this space.
Forums:
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Comments
Just tell them tree-fiddy.
RIB?
Depends on the project and which side, Contracting or Engineering?
Owners Representative so would be Estimating the engineering and contracting cost
On the owners or engineering side, I use a lot of bid tabulations (historical data) for publicly bid projects to generate average cost numbers for similar projects. That works best on road and utility estimating.
RS Means is the usual standard.
100% RS Means. There is a digital version but the hard copy works too.
On the contractor side - my company uses Bluebeam for takeoffs and excel for estimating.
For your purposes I'd say some sort of takeoff software so you can get estimated quantities and then base budgetary numbers off of historical data from previous projects. I'm in the structural rehabilitation/restoration world so 99% of my work has an EOR who does this and provides budgets to the owner.
I'm an architect and have worked with Construction Managers and Owners Project Managers for many years, and I'm just getting into the public bid realm where I'm much more involved on providing estimates to owners ahead of bid issuance. For our part, we are using rough order of magnitude costs per square foot, derived from active or recently completed projects, which we base approximately based on scope of work. Costs have been in such flux the last 2+ years, that this has been our only real method of getting anywhere close, and we're very fortunate to have so many projects to pull from as sources. That said, everyone is holding their breath to see what happens with the larger tariff/geopolitical scene... 🤷
Admittedly, this is from an Architect's' perspective, but I would echo what Harris13 said above about Bluebeam— I have a hard time imagining a quicker way of getting and managing takeoffs from a PDF set. I would also emphasize that some of Bluebeam's biggest advantages are in its ability to coordinate full drawing sets with multiple parties, even within the same office. I have used the features like Projects, Sessions, Sets, and the full functionality of the Markup list to drastically reduce the headaches associated with document revisions and questions—for one, it's reduced our inter-team project emails immensely. For takeoffs, you can create them in a combined PDF "Set", automatically update/slip sheet in revised versions of the same documents when they become available (you can even have BB scan the documents to tell you what has changed), and update/migrate your takeoffs to the newly revised documents automatically. From there, you can export your takeoffs to Excel, and as long as you are organized (and I mean borderline obsessively organized, especially about things that might seem trivial, like consistent file naming and locations on a server), you can have "live" links between your exported takeoffs and excel worksheets to automate a lot of the normally tedious and repetitive aspects out of the process. With our with our owners reps and CMs, we are using BB to manage our RFI, revision tracking, and punchlist process, among other things.
I have worked with a few CMs who have used Procore, (which I think is a web based?), with a similar functionality, starting in the early concept budget estimation process running all the way through document management, submittals, and punch listing. From a design professionals point of view, this has worked well too, but I can't speak to the pricing or ease of use/management for Procore. I know for certain that several of the CMs I have worked with have gotten a lot of utility out of the budget and cost tools that Procore has, but admittedly these were during the construction phase of work.
Hope this helps?
Your explanation of how your team uses Bluebeam makes me jealous. Also an architect and we can barely get people to open a Bluebeam Session and make comments.
Sitting and marking up some sewage pump station drawings on the other monitor right now with Bluebeam.
For estimating, we use our historical data to get $/SF based on specific use of space and $/acre for site work standardized to the region the project is located. We add in market indexes depending on the region that we pay for quarterly updates which includes updates to specifics material costs. We also have specific adders for one off costs that are usually for local or state code requirements (cough cough California). This is for our budgeting purposes only and not hard costs to use as bids.
We also lean on our GCs that we have good relationships with if we need better numbers than just a rough estimate.
What type of work are you estimating? Residential, commercial, industrial, highway/heavy? Is this detailed estimating such as a hard bid takeoff or is this more conceptual? Are you looking to integrate this with any accounting or project management software?
We use Bluebeam software for onscreen takeoff. It's a tremendously powerful program if you really peel back the layers of it. If you're doing highway/heavy, there are a number of good programs to take off volumes and areas that work well. We use Sage Timberline for compiling estimates and manual takeoff. It has been around forever and while it's a bit cumbersome, it works very well and integrates with some of the other programming we have related to budgeting and job cost.
Adding another vote for Bluebeam for take offs. As a GC/CM we don't do alot of detailed take offs and we compile estimates with excel. We use RsMeans plus previous project experience for unit costs and ROM budgets.
Now I wish I had thought to ask this group about accounting systems. We're switching from sage 300 finally (after 8 years deciding) and chose to go with Premier over a few others. We're sticking with Procore for field collaboration but I'm hoping we can replace that with Premier next year or expand bluebeam to the field.