Take-off software recommendations.

[Diacon]

Hi, I was hired by a friend to do grading and material take-offs. The company does ~$20,000,000 a year in grading, paving and concrete work. I use Agtek with Sitework 98. I was trained by someone, who was trained by someone, who was trained by someone that may have known what there doing. I've have been doing the take-offs for over a year and constantly finding I have been doing them wrong(too slow and not accurate). We do not have the instruction manual( I know it only costs~$25.00) and no technical support(~500.00 a year). I do up to 8 take-offs a week with jobs ranging from 5 to 100+ acres. I am almost always behind. All take-offs are with a GTCO digitizer. I do not know if our system is capable of useing CAD files.

We have been looking into updating our software. An AGTEK sales rep. has come out and gave an impressive demonstration. The department heads were too busy to be there and realy wanted to see a head to head comparison of the old to the new product on paper. The sales rep was unable to provide that. Our area has been going through record growth and we can't even do all the jobs that are offered. This makes the high price tag of AGTEK a harder sell. My friend(head of estimating) wants better estimating software and is interested in GPS tools for estimating and work varification.

My questions are:

What percentage of the plans you get for bidding are available with CAD files?

If you have CAD files how much faster can you get Earthwork and Quantity take-offs done? (Say a 20 acre job)

If you use GPS how has it helped?


All reviews of modern software would be very helpful and appriciated.

Thank you, Todd

 

[msucog]

from my experience, the owner/engineer always specifies that the cad files must not be relied upon for such things...so you're using it at you're own risk.
as far as gps, it is not usually very reliable for elevation unless you invest in very expensive systems. however, for rough figures, usgs does provide 3d elevation data just about anywhere. currently, the 1/3 arc data is accurate to 10' if i'm not mistaken. 1/9 arc data is currently in progress which is good to 3' but it is very limited. go to

http://www.usgs.gov

and go to the bottom left, scroll down, and click on seamless data. i suggest you read the faq section since most computer setting will mess up accessing the data. the data can be downloaded and manipulated (even pulled out to generate a topo map and put in to you gps).
for quantities, i generally use spreadsheet and area squares. plug in the cut/fill depths and it will approximate pretty well. basically, grid the site, pull the exising elevations at some point, plug in the finish elevation and calculate the quantities based on that. use smaller areas for better approximations. this may not really be practical for very large sites but it might be quicker than what it takes to get cad files and if there are errors, it would at least be a good check. this method has saved one of my clients 20,000 cy of extra blast rock pay since the blaster used a swanky 3d program and ended up with twice as much rock as i did on the first blast. my method was correct (and simple).

 

[DirtEst]

Bigdirt,

Shoot me an email when you get a chance.

Bart Saucier
Bart@bricconstructors.com