Guaranteeing accurate estimates with Takeoff

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to “The Better Way”, the Buildertrend podcast designed to teach you how our construction platform calms the chaos in your business. I’m your host, Marge Haley. In today’s episode, I’m joined by David Livingston. Welcome.

Speaker 2:

Hi, Marge. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I’m happy you’re here. I’m super excited to get into the nitty gritty of Buildertrend Takeoff, but before we do, tell me a little bit about yourself. What’s your story, David?

Speaker 2:

Sure. Yeah. So I’ve been at Buildertrend for the past three years. Most recently, I became the estimating and Takeoff specialist, part of why I’m probably doing these podcasts, which is great. I love this stuff. I love getting into the nitty gritty of Takeoff. That’s what I do every day. Before Buildertrend, I did own and operate a hardscape and landscape construction company for five years, so I’ve kind of seen both spectrums, both actually working with clients and being in the trenches, literally, and then the white collar side of it and helping businesses implement Buildertrend and now helping them implement Takeoff and estimating.

Speaker 1:

Excellent. Well, let’s go in and get into the nitty gritty of Takeoff.

Speaker 2:

All right, let’s have some fun.

Speaker 1:

I like this whole title. I heard it’s Takeoff Guru. Is that what it is?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Takeoff Guru. You can also call me the Takeoff Magician. No, I am the Estimating and Takeoff Specialist here at Buildertrend.

Speaker 1:

Got it. That’s a big title, and wears quite the cape around here with our new feature being released recently. So welcome to the podcast and I’m excited to get some of these questions answered.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Marge. Thanks for having me. This is awesome.

Speaker 1:

All right. Well, we can go ahead and get started with some of these questions here. To get going, I would like to just understand a little bit more about how, without a takeoff software, builders were producing estimates? And tell me a little bit more about how they can produce accurate estimates without software like Buildertrend Takeoff.

Speaker 2:

Oh boy, accurate estimates without software is quite difficult. But back in the day, historically the way that takeoffs have been done is you literally take a blueprint and a ruler and a calculator, and you sit there, and you set your ruler down, you set up your linear, you do your areas, and you do your counts. And then basically you run your own calculations using a calculator and maybe a piece of paper for your scratch notes and work. And it’s very laborious, it takes a lot of time to put those together, and anybody that’s listening that’s done that before is probably having flashbacks of how terrible it is. But software, really any takeoff software in general, is going to do a lot more than that, and specifically Buildertrend Takeoff is a unique experience because not only are you running your takeoff, the calculations are prebuilt for you. Also all that data sends over to the estimate, which is probably the most exciting piece of it.

The builders that are running their own manual takeoffs, I’d say that they’re kind of few and far between, are kind of the old timers, I’d say. What a lot of newer contractors are doing is they’ll just send out their plans to their subcontractors and they submit their plans to their lumber suppliers, and those entities, or those people involved, are actually doing the takeoffs. With that, it takes a lot of time to get those back a lot of times, and there’s a lot of issues with it. But the alternative without software to run takeoffs is just not feasible for a lot of people.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. And asking someone else to run your numbers, there could be some inaccuracies or over-ordering, under-ordering, things like that too.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, we could go all the way down that. I could get started with that. I just talked to a guy the other day, I asked him, “What are you interested in with Takeoff?” And he tells me that he’s in a kind of smaller town and all of the builders go to the same lumber supplier, and so that lumber supplier is always backdated. It takes six weeks to get their material calculations done and actually get a quote.

And so think about it in a competitive atmosphere. Every builder goes to that place, so the first person to put in their ticket for the takeoff is going to win the job, or at least be able to get the estimate to that client faster. So what he wanted to do is be able to run a takeoff quicker so he could just have a material list to submit to that lumber supplier and order the material with. You can make a six week lead time turn into one or two days if you know what you’re doing in the takeoff system, if not less than that.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that’s unbelievable. So tell me a little bit more about how it can improve a team, if you have an estimating team, and how having an all-in-one software with not only takeoff, but producing the actual estimate, releasing the estimate, all through one software, how can that improve an estimating team?

Speaker 2:

I think with any cloud-based software, the unique advantage is you could do it from anywhere. I mean, you could be on a flight, if you have wifi, you could be in a hotel, or whatever the case might be, and not only yourself, but multiple parties involved can be running takeoff measurements and quantity calculations all at the same time.

And the beautiful part about that is all the effort you’re putting in as a team through the Takeoff system is automatically populating an estimate in Buildertrend, which then you can use for both internal budget tracking purposes as well as an external contract. So it’s super cool and I’m just so honored to actually be able to do this and to be the specialist for it. It is truly fantastic.

Speaker 1:

You have a wealth of information and I’m excited to share it with our builders listening. If you’re new here to Buildertrend, you may not know, but recently we released a new estimate feature, updated it, and enhanced it. Tell me a little bit about that enhancement and how it goes hand-in-hand with our takeoff software.

Speaker 2:

Oh man, how much time do we have?

Speaker 1:

All day.

Speaker 2:

No, it works out really well. Probably what I’m the most excited about is the ability to not only send over takeoff data, but then what you can do with that data once it gets to the estimate. We have line item actions to be able to create a bid package directly off of quantity calculations. We have the ability to create purchase orders directly off of line items. We can invoice our clients off of those line items. And ultimately everything we’re doing, whether you were in the old version of our estimate or now that you’re in the new version, all of that’s consolidated in a budget report based on your cost code structure. So really, in my opinion, the addition of Takeoff to the software creates a perfect harmony, so to speak, of our estimating experience from the very beginning all the way through the very end of accounting and job costing.

Speaker 1:

Very cool. That’s excellent. As we go through these episodes, it just seems like there’s a lot of opportunity to save time and money with these two features.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, I mean, Takeoff in particular. I mean, one of my colleagues when I was talking to her, she was like, “What are ways I can speak about this to builders, so they can kind of understand why this is so beneficial?” And then after I explained some things to her, she kind of had a flashback of her childhood and one of her friend’s dads had a big drafting table in his basement, always had spreadsheets on it, always had big blueprints. I mean, that guy used to be down there for hours, is what she said. You hardly ever saw the guy. So, if you’re manually running a takeoff and you’re considering software at all, it’s worth every amount of effort to learn it, because it saves an immense amount of time.

Not only that, I think what I love is inside of the takeoff system, there are these things called assemblies. And if you don’t know what assemblies are, well, if you’ve never used Takeoff before, you don’t know what assemblies are, but assemblies essentially have parts inside of them that have preset calculations to determine the total quantity outputs. So I can measure on a 2D image on software, I can measure a space of a wall and it can output the total amount of framing materials I need for that wall. I can measure 100 feet and easily calculate the studs I need at 16 inch on center, my top and bottom plates that are 16 feet wide.

The process of doing that manually is just awful. Sitting there with a calculator. Not only does it take more time, but then you risk a lot of inaccuracies in making a little mistake. And if we all go back in time when we were in algebra, mistakes are imminent when you’re trying to do things by hand.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. That’s incredible. So kind of going back to Buildertrend’s estimate and how it links with the Takeoff software. Can you tell me more about those links or integrations and how you can go from Takeoff to outputting an estimate with Buildertrend?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I kind of alluded to the structure of it with assemblies. Assemblies is a pack of parts, so an assembly might be an interior wall for framing or whatever, and then the parts inside of that will calculate the quantities you need for each individual part. So say top plates, studs, bottom plates, and temporary frame wall bracing for interior walls, every one of those parts, once it calculates, is automatically sending that data to the estimate.

So it’s kind of two pieces. So every time you complete an assembly and the parts calculate, every line item is generated and automatically syncing the data from the Takeoff system, not only the quantity outputs, meaning how many studs, top plates, bottom plates, but then also the costing and markup data you’re putting in there.

So yeah, I mean, that’s really what it boils down to. And there’s a lot of flexibility to it as well. When you run an assembly, say you set up your studs at 16 inches on center, maybe two weeks from now, your whoever, your architect, or maybe it’s somebody in the permits office says, “You know what, we’re going to require 24 inch on center spacing for those studs.” You can just go back to it, change it to 24 inches, and it automatically repopulates the quantities so you’re not having to redo all your work. It’s really fantastic.

Speaker 1:

Wow. That’s incredible. That all in one mindset really sounds attractive. Being able to just go to one software, have all of your data, have it flow back and forth between what you’ve done on your takeoff to the actual estimate ready for release.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And not only to release it to your clients, externally it works great. I mean, you can build up, you can make a lumber package with every piece of lumber, including your joist and roof rafters, which we’re one of the only cloud-based takeoff softwares that have a joist and roof rafter tool built in. It takes a lot of data and a lot of effort to make that work apparently, at least that’s what the product team tells me.

Speaker 1:

You didn’t build that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I’m not that smart. I hardly got this job as it is.

Speaker 1:

Oh, come on.

Speaker 2:

I was on the streets before this. But I guess not only for external purposes, to send out that contract to your client, but the other things that it does for you, your job costing reports, right? The ability to create bid packages off of those things and really be able to take that next step in your estimating processes. I think that’s what it’s all about, and that’s why we put so much effort and time into doing this and why so many people have requested this throughout time, I think.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. Being on the phones, I originated my career in the customer success department, and just thinking back to all the clients that asked for takeoff and asked for recommendations for takeoffs. I never really had a great answer. Now that answer’s so easy.

Oh man. Well, thanks for being with us, David. This was a great episode. I’m excited to jump into episode two and we’ll keep rolling.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Yeah. There’s a whole lot more to talk about.

Speaker 1:

Wow, David, your knowledge and experience with Buildertrend Takeoff is remarkable. Thank you so much for being here today.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

And for all of you listening out there, be sure you tune into episode two, where David is going to do a deeper dive into Buildertrend Takeoff. And make sure before you leave to rate, review and subscribe to “The Better Way”. See you next time.