Conduit prices have fallen dramatically this month. This is just the opposite of what was happening a year ago.

In teaching electrical and plumbing contractors how to use our Time & Material Billing program, I have always stressed the importance of getting the paperwork filled out by the person doing the work before they leave the job site.

Electrical and Plumbing contractors have long been motivated to computerize their estimating and billing to increase speed and reduce errors. A new motivation by many new customers I’ve trained in recent months has been caused by the unprecedented increases and changes in material prices.

Many contractors who bid repetitive and simple types of jobs had a limited need for computerized estimating because they could base their pricing on experience with similar jobs. It’s easy to come up with a simple formula for pricing based on the number of outlets and/or square footage after a contractor has done a few tract homes. Few other types of work have such repetition or predictability. Since material pricing was stable and predicable until a year or two ago, small adjustments took care of things.

Today, with some commodities doubling and even tripling in price over the last one to two years, it’s virtually impossible to make adjustments without breaking a bid down into specific items with current pricing. Unfortunately, many of the experienced estimators who could put together rough bids, even on large projects, using unit prices and/or other general factors, are no longer able to use their old formulas. There is no reliable way to make a general adjustment to the old numbers because some products have increased dramatically, some modestly, and some have come back down over recent months. The only solution is to use estimating software to quickly update and re-price material so that it is feasible to do an accurate and efficient bid.

Estimating software is growing in importance every year. Most construction contractors can benefit from using some type of estimating software. I suggest getting started with some type of construction software as soon as is convenient for your company. Most software companies, including ours, offers training that will severely cut the software learning curve.

written by Brian Hoffelder – Vision’s Software Training Professional