At the past several meetings, I have noticed a rather large percentage of attendees that did not have any business cards with them. Do you remember when a person would get a rather strange look if they didn’t have any cards at a meeting? Usually, they had some excuse such as they left their stack [...]
Even though times have changed dramatically does not mean that old information is useless. I have collected quite the selection of reference books; some I think are older than me. While prices have changed, many aspects of construction remain the same. I have also collected another treasure cove, a retired estimator’s notes. I was able [...]
We have seen an increase in the number of construction disputes in the last three to four months. Not only is the number noteworthy – more than we saw in the previous two years – there are other areas that are interesting. One of the first that comes to mind is the amounts that are [...]
There is always a great need in the construction industry to share knowledge, but this need is even greater now! With the first nuclear reactor being approved in 30 years, the old-timer estimators need to share their knowledge of the nuclear reactor work with the next generation. There are lots of estimators around now that [...]
Working on a claim involves digging through documentation that can be complex. It can involve daily job logs by multiple parties, meeting minutes, correspondence, schedules and a wealth of other information. This information can also be incomplete and you have to correlate documents from the multiple parties to get a better understanding of what transpired [...]
Successful projects rely upon getting the costs right. Whether an owner, designer, construction manager, or contractor, if the costs are not right, the project will suffer. To get the costs right, you have to have the right personnel involved on the project from the beginning. Reliable budgets need to be developed from the very beginning. [...]
A project came across my desk the other day that I wanted to tell my client to run, not walk, away from. None of the drawings were to scale and the reference drawings did not show the dimensions that I needed to do an accurate takeoff. The location of almost all of the major items [...]
Getting the right budget on a project is not a difficult process. In fact, it can take some serious effort to get it prepared incorrectly. It doesn’t matter what size the project may be. On a recent assignment we were assisting the owner/developer to prepare the project budget. Our role was the oversight, gathering and [...]
Not only does good documentation need to done on the project but also during the estimating process. I don’t know how many times I have been asked questions about a project that I had estimated sometimes up to several years before. Without good documentation, it would be impossible to track down the answer. It reminds [...]
The other day I was talking to a retired gentleman who was discussing how a company he had once worked for tried to get greedy on a project and almost lost a long term client. Basically, the construction company started to nickel and dime the client on a GMP project so the billed amount would [...]
