- HOW TO FIND A CONSTRUCTION TAKEOFF SOFTWARE MANUAL
- HOW TO FIND A CONSTRUCTION TAKEOFF SOFTWARE SOFTWARE
With the right software tools, digital takeoffs set your team up for more success during estimating by allowing you to seamlessly create a bill of materials for suppliers and incorporate labor and materials using pre-built and customizable libraries. – Easy access to historical data for project review and forecasting – Higher levels of accuracy in measurements – Ability to work from more than one device or location – Simplified collaboration among colleagues – Digital storage for easy access to plans and documents On-screen takeoffs offer substantial benefits such as:
HOW TO FIND A CONSTRUCTION TAKEOFF SOFTWARE MANUAL
The time crunch of a manual takeoff means that bid deadlines can get missed and also that an estimator doesn’t have the brain space necessary to produce their best work.Ĭonverting to a digital takeoff process eliminates these drawbacks. – Conducting measurements on paper is time-consuming and prone to human error. – Storing printed blueprints takes up valuable office space and puts you at risk of losing or damaging expensive plans in the time between printing and the start of a job. – Printing blueprints is cost prohibitive, and significant amounts of time can be eaten up by scheduling at specialty print shops and picking up plans. Some of the problems associated with manual takeoffs include: Historically, takeoffs were done on actual printed blueprints, and some contractors continue to use this outdated manual takeoff method. A cumbersome, time-consuming takeoff workflow means less time for your team to put their analytical skills to use crafting estimates that will win you bids and earn you profits. So, because the construction takeoff, though very important, is not the only task to complete before a bid, setting a goal for speeding up your takeoff process could be the best way to put your company on a path to growth. From here, you’ll be able to make the jump to how much you should mark up your selling price to reach your desired profit margin. The construction estimate is where you apply all of these costs together to generate a total project cost: this is how much you’ll have to pay out of pocket to complete the job at hand. When you’ve determined that number, you can then begin to account for non-material costs, like labor hours, overhead, sales tax, and any other indirect costs. Your objective with performing takeoffs is to create a clear picture of the cost of materials needed to do a particular job. The takeoff itself is just one part of the preconstruction process, leading up to creating an estimate and proposal. For example, if you need to pour a 6-inch slab of concrete, and you measure out 400 square feet, you’ll need to buy 445 60-lb bags of concrete, or 334 80-lb bags. Note that while quantity takeoffs result in the exact amount of materials needed for a job, material takeoffs require assigning items and assemblies to your measurements so you can calculate quantities based on how materials are packaged and sold. – Volume (cubic feet or yards) for civil and site work such as pouring concrete slabs or walls, or laying asphalt – Surface area (square feet) for installing drywall, flooring, or sloped roofing, or for painting walls – Linear feet for installing and painting baseboards, trim, or parking lot lines, or running cable and wire Most trades also perform material takeoffs. Then there are material takeoffs, which involve performing measurements and applying formulas to determine how much material is needed. They’re typically used for determining material counts for items like: Contractors in MEP trades are frequent users of quantity takeoffs, but most trades do quantity takeoffs to some degree. Quantity takeoffs are required when you simply need to get counts of a type of material needed. The main difference in the two is that quantity involves counts while material involves measurements. The two types of takeoffs are quantity and material takeoffs.