AI for Projects | AI for Business | Entrepreneur | Project Turnaround | Passionate about High-Tech Innovation | Let's Navigate Together
England
Joined April 2016
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A drainage supplier sent us a drawing. Note 11 said see manhole schedule. There was no manhole schedule in the set.
The job stalled before anyone measured anything.
My first question now. What happens when a drawing lands, and how long before a price goes back?
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We sent a balustrade fabricator a takeoff 70 m short. 3.7% under on about 1,870 m.
Over costs a slice of margin. Under gets found on site.
If you order off your own takeoff, your band should be nought to plus, never minus.
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Before you let anyone near your quoting, hand them a page of a quote you've already sent. Ask them to point at the line they'd produce.
A good supplier answers in a minute. One who can't has told you before you've paid.
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A balustrade firm prices 15 to 20 jobs a month. Faster turnaround and they'd price 30 to 40.
They weren't short of enquiries. They were short of hours.
Count last quarter's tenders that lapsed because nobody got to them. That's order book you never competed for.
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A facade estimator told me his team might take off the same job five times. One job, five revisions. If every line knows which sheet and revision it came from, a revision means checking what changed. If not, it's a fresh job, paid for once.
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The structural drawings for a roof we measured never gave the pitch. A section did. Fifteen degrees.
Roof plans draw every roof flat. At 15 degrees every run is 3.5% longer. Past the manufacturer's pitch limit, free-standing guardrail isn't the product at all.
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A QS checked our takeoff and wrote one sentence on every sheet. "This holds if the roof is flat."
Nobody had told him. A sign-off is a verdict on the inputs the checker was given.
Read the conditions before the totals.
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An underfloor heating firm asked us for floor areas. They don't order area. They order pipe, ports, actuators, fittings. Across 65 past jobs, fittings per loop came out at 2.00 on 62. That's arithmetic, not judgement. Write the rules down once and they run.
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A cubicle manufacturer quotes from a spreadsheet built by someone who left. No one can add new products to it.
That spreadsheet holds the counting rules the whole business runs on.
If your estimator was off for a fortnight, who would turn a washroom plan into an order?
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Our engine refuses to measure some drawings. That is the feature I am proudest of.
A tool that returns a number for a sheet it could not read gives you something worse than nothing. It looks exactly like a real answer.
Silence is the failure mode to design against, not errors.