Winning more bids in less time

Marge Haley:

Welcome back to “The Better Way”, the Buildertrend podcast designed to teach you how to use construction software to achieve your goals. I’m your host, Marge Haley, and in today’s episode, I’m joined again by David Livingston. Welcome.

David Livingston:

Hey, thanks for having me. Glad to be back.

Marge Haley:

Yeah, I’m glad to talk to you again about Buildertrend Takeoff. Give me a little rundown again about your career path and how you’ve landed in this position for the listeners that weren’t here for episode one.

David Livingston:

Sure. Yeah, so I’ve been at Buildertrend for the past three years, and my official title today is the estimating and takeoff specialist.

Marge Haley:

We should change that to guru.

David Livingston:

Yeah, guru or magician, right?

Marge Haley:

Yeah.

David Livingston:

I kind of am a magician, I just appeared on this next podcast, right?

Marge Haley:

Yes.

David Livingston:

Look at that.

Marge Haley:

Yeah, take two.

David Livingston:

But before this, I owned and operated a hardscape and landscape construction company for five years, so yeah, I’ve been in the construction space for my entire professional career. One side of it, again, kind of in the blue collar, literally digging in the trenches and running a company and working with clients, and then the other side of it, white collar work, working with builders and helping them make their processes even better with software, which has been a cool change. I love it, it’s great.

Marge Haley:

Yeah, excellent. Well, we are lucky to have you at Buildertrend, and I’m very lucky to have you on this podcast. I’m excited to learn more about Buildertrend Takeoff.

David Livingston:

Absolutely. Let’s do this thing.

Marge Haley:

Let’s go. I want to know more about your conversations with builders. You get to have this unique experience of talking to builders solely about takeoff. With those conversations, what are some of the ways that general contractors can benefit from running their own takeoff?

David Livingston:

Yeah, in the last episode, and some of you probably are doing this currently where you submit your plans directly to your subs or your suppliers for pricing, and the reality of that is, sure, you don’t have to run the takeoff, but you’re kind of at the mercy of those suppliers and those subcontractors.

In the conversations I’ve had, I’ll give you an example of a guy. We were talking about drywall, and his drywaller quoted him for, I don’t know what the number was, I think 300 sheets of drywall or something. He says, “I ran my own calculations and it came out to 220, so whose numbers do you think are more correct?” I was like, “Well, if you scaled your image properly and you applied your assembly properly, I would argue to say yours are probably a lot closer than theirs are, right?” So, what he’s doing is he’s actually going to buy 300 sheets of drywall, then he’s going to count the leftover when it’s done and see how close he was to the calculation and who was more correct.

Basically, if you boil it down, you’re at the mercy of these subcontractors and suppliers for pricing. So, on the subcontractor front, say you build 100 homes a year and you’re getting ripped off by one of your subcontractors for $1,000 every time, because they’re over-quoting you on say drywall, very simple math could tell you that’s $100,000 a year that otherwise you may not have to spend if you are willing to outreach to a broader subcontractor network and see if you could find somebody who’s more honest, or would be willing to give you pricing based on your calculations and not on their calculations.

Same thing with lumber suppliers, right? So, I’ll give you another example of a guy. I did mention this in the previous podcast, but I think it speaks volumes to the purpose of this. In that case, he had a lumber supplier that took six weeks to run a takeoff for him, and he’s able to cut it down into one or two days once he learns and develops his understanding of our takeoff system.

So with that, that allows you to sell jobs faster, you can get quotes out to your homeowner or your estimates out to your homeowner faster, and it allows you to get more competitive pricing. So, you’re not stuck with one supplier that does your takeoff every single time, maybe you venture out and get a price from 84 Lumber and then you get a price from Home Depot. You know what? You might be surprised that Home Depot might be a little bit more competitive. Again, you build 100 homes a year, you run your own takeoff, save $100,000 on your lumber package, the savings are there.

Marge Haley:

Yeah, yeah.

David Livingston:

So, I think that’s really what it boils down to is saving yourself money by putting in a little bit of extra effort to build your takeoffs.

Marge Haley:

Absolutely. That’s really interesting that it kind of just puts into perspective of don’t rely on someone else to come up with your numbers, because it’s no skin off their nose of adding a couple extra sheets of drywall. They’re not paying for it; you’re paying for it plus markup. So, it makes sense that you would want to keep that in-house and really be in control of those numbers.

David Livingston:

Yeah, or they over-order and then they take all the stuff back to them in their warehouse. After a couple times doing jobs with you, the next time they do a job, they don’t even have to buy material, because they’re just using all the leftovers that they’ve been over-charging you for the whole time, right? You could boil that down to any trade.

Marge Haley:

Absolutely. Working with so many trades and relying on so many different people, it’s hard to trust that many different companies.

David Livingston:

Yeah, a lot of contractors have well-formed relationships with subs, and so even the most well-formed relationships, everybody’s in it for money, right? You might be surprised once you get in and you run your own takeoff what those quantities are actually going to be. You can feel assured that once you run a takeoff and you do it properly, your calculations are going to be very correct within a negligible margin of error.

Marge Haley:

Wow, that’s incredible. So, we’ve talked about how GCs can benefit from Buildertrend Takeoff. Can other trades use Buildertrend Takeoff, or is this primarily focused on the GC?

David Livingston:

No, that’s a great question. So takeoff, primarily if you think about it through the lens of the general contractor submitting that to the subcontractors for takeoff calculations, there’s a huge purpose or a huge use case for subcontractors doing takeoffs to the system. So I’d say by and large, Buildertrend caters primarily to general contractors, but with the addition of Takeoff, I think there’s a lot of opportunities for specialty trades, specifically roofing.

Our takeoff system has Google imaging, so it can take a satellite image and zoom in on a property and it provides a pre-scaled image based on that satellite image. Then a roofer could just trace out the roof and apply the proper quantities of shingles, underlayment, waterproofing. Really, you could even do gutter work, downspouts. There’s about a million things you could do with it and you can do it all from the comfort of a chair.

Someone could say, “Hey, I need a quote on my roof.” They give you their address and you don’t even really have to show up onsite, other than to know what the pitch of the roof is. I mean, could really run a takeoff and a full calculation right there.

Marge Haley:

Wow, that’s incredible. That saves a lot of time running around to homes and then manually measuring.

David Livingston:

Yeah. I think there’s more than just roofing, right? So any exterior trade with that Google imaging service, it’s pretty cool. So concrete contractors, I got a quote from a concrete guy and I’ve had multiple people show up on my property to give me these quotes, and they’ve high-balled me a lot, because I ran my own takeoff calculation, so I know how many cubic yards of concrete it’s supposed to take for my driveway. But anyways, imagine how much time they could save without showing up on my property and bothering me. They could have just put it together on their computer and sent it.

Marge Haley:

Absolutely. That’s great customer service too. Not even take days off of work or run home over lunch or whatever to try to meet them, so that enhances the experience for the customer too.

David Livingston:

Yep, decks, landscaping, hardscaping, pool companies, pool installations. We service a lot of pool contractors, actually. So, the ability to preset assemblies and put in your parts for your filters and all your different PVC and your plumbing for pools, there’s a huge application for that. So yeah, it’s really exciting the things it can do, and once you really understand it, you can do just about anything you want with it.

Marge Haley:

That’s incredible. Thanks for sharing those stories.

David Livingston:

Yeah.

Marge Haley:

That’s really interesting hearing firsthand what these builders are going through and how it can benefit them. So, now I’m sure you hear a lot how time-intensive it is to manually create a takeoff. Last episode you talked a lot about the ruler and the calculations, and I’d like to hear more about that. Why is it so time-consuming and how can Buildertrend help with that?

David Livingston:

Beyond just the laborious process of taking a huge blueprint and measuring it with a ruler, I think what it really comes down to are the calculations and formulas, right? You almost have to be a math guru to really be good at it and to do these formulas all on your own, and God forbid in your head, right?

So, what’s cool about our system is that we have pre-populated formulas inside of all of our parts. So, the way this is designed is the assembly has a parent level measurement value. Whether it’s a linear foot measurement, we can even do square footage of walls based on the height, we also can calculate area, and then finally, we do count values. Now based on the measurement being made on a plan, I can measure out 300 square feet, the formulas inside of our parts will take that 300 square foot, for example, and convert it into cubic yards.

So, I’ll give you an example of one of the assemblies that I think is super cool. So, we have a slab concrete assembly, and all you have to do on your foundation plan is measure out where you’re going to put your slab, put in the type of rebar and everything you want in it. Based on the area, say it’s a 300 square foot area, it’ll automatically tell you how many cubic yards of concrete you need based on whatever depth you desire. Not only that, but then of course, how much rebar you need, wire mesh, Visqueen, the list goes on and on.

So, that right there is the time-saver. One assembly could pack in four or five different parts and all of the formulas needed to calculate the total quantity of materials you need for those things. That is the time-saver, and that I think is really where you get an extraordinary amount of value out of the system.

Marge Haley:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. That’s crazy that that information’s at your fingertips, it’s really mind-blowing to me.

David Livingston:

Yeah, it’s built for you. It’s all put together for you in these things called our templated assemblies. Yeah, they come with the purchase or the subscription to Takeoff.

Marge Haley:

Wow, that’s crazy. So, tell me a little bit more about the types of equations or some of the equations that are pre-built that our builders could benefit from right away.

David Livingston:

Oh man. Oh, we have basically a CSI division list of templated assemblies for virtually anything, all the way from asphalt. Asphalt, framing, concrete, we go down into windows and doors. Those are pretty easy calculations, because it’s just quantities and their count values. Man, footings is another big one. Being able to just calculate total pour for footings based on a linear value measurement is extraordinarily powerful. Flooring, light fixtures, tile, tile walls. I mean-

Marge Haley:

Wow.

David Livingston:

Anything you can think of you’re putting in a home, we have an assembly for it. Not only do we have an assembly for that, but with very slight adjustments, you can basically customize these assemblies and sort of piggyback these formulas to make really whatever you want.

For example, a pretty common one is people that pour footings want J-Bars built in. So, those are vertical pieces of rebar running through a footing. Our default in the assembly doesn’t really have it built out, but with a slight adaptation of a stud part, from the previous podcast if you heard talking about interior walls, it’s just an on-center spacing value, so you can switch it and you can basically adapt it to be a vertical rebar. Maybe we’re talking different languages, some people are probably going to be like, “Geez, Dave. Make it easier for me.” But it is really exciting and it’s so cool, and I just nerd out about it.

Marge Haley:

Yeah, we love that here. I feel like I’m fangirling over here over your knowledge of it. It’s really incredible just to hear you talk about it and feel the passion that you have for it.

Okay, so you said count value, you said linear value. Can you tell me about what that means and all of the counts and ways to measure within our takeoff software?

David Livingston:

Yeah, so there’s three basic takeoff tools. There’s area, linear and count values. Now the assemblies, what they do is they take that value and they run it through a formula. The parts inside of the assembly runs a formula to calculate total quantity of materials.

So, say you run a linear measurement of footings and it’s 100 feet of footings, well, our footings assembly or part is designed to take that linear foot and adjust the width of that footing, the depth of that footing, which then converts that into cubic yardage for the total amount of concrete you need for those footings. Not only that, but your rebar, your rebar chairs and everything you could possibly think of that’s included in those footings.

So, I mean, yeah, that’s really what it is. Yeah, area, linear and count values work as the parent level measurements to our templated assemblies and our parts.

Marge Haley:

Got it. Interesting. Very cool. So, we’re going to take it back to last episode and you spoke to joist and roof rafter tooling that BT Takeoff has, and you mentioned that it’s the only cloud-based software that can provide this. Can you go into more detail of what that means? Why Buildertrend Takeoff is where it’s at with this type of tooling and just go into some detail, please?

David Livingston:

Buildertrend Takeoff is where it’s at.

Marge Haley:

Yeah, duh.

David Livingston:

With everything. Yeah, so no, joist and roof rafter tooling. So, what you can do basically is you can measure an area on a set of plans and you can automatically populate the total amount of joist you need, say floor joist for the whole system. But all the rim boards, as well as the individual components and the individual joist sets, you can also set up in on-center spacing. So, it’s really a huge time-saver.

So, rather than sitting there, and again, the ruler, or even just manually putting in account value for every say 2x10x12 or whatever you might need for your choice, basically you measure an area and our tool automatically identifies using our parts catalog and database. It automatically fills in the proper amount and quantity of boards that you need to fit that space. It’s truly fantastic, it’s probably one of the coolest things.

Not only that, but we can do it for roof rafters as well. So, you can do a roof rafter with a pitch included and you can basically adjust the total quantity of roof rafters, and then you can do, of course, your ridge beams and things like that.

Yeah, it’s a huge time-saver. Again, it’s funny. I learned from the original Takeoff team that we’re probably the only cloud-based software that has joist and roof rafter tooling built in. A lot of them are Windows-based or downloaded applications, because it’s very demanding, apparently.

Marge Haley:

Got it.

David Livingston:

And the database is hard for them to use. So yeah, it’s fantastic. It’s super cool.

Marge Haley:

That’s awesome. That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing that. That’s really intriguing that we have that, that we can provide that and make it really easy for our builders. Not only the linear, but through roofing and all the sort, so that’s really cool.

David Livingston:

Yeah, and don’t forget, all that data sends over to the estimate too.

Marge Haley:

Yeah.

David Livingston:

So, very accurate job costing reports when you’re looking at lumber packages and really anything else.

Marge Haley:

For sure. It’s that all-in-one feel. So, we have clients all over the world. Is this a U.S. only service? Tell me a little bit about that.

David Livingston:

Yeah, so we have both imperial and metric measurement capabilities, so yeah, essentially we service anywhere in the U.S., as well as really anywhere in the world. Now, I will say our imperial assembly sets are maybe a little bit more robust than the metric assembly sets that we have, as those are still going through beta and we’re making them better. But if you’re a metric user and you join up, we do have pre-populated templates available for you with pre-built calculations, so long as you scale in meters.

Even in Canada, part of the construction process is done in imperial, but the other day I learned that concrete apparently is exclusively done in metric. So a guy had uploaded a page of his plan for his foundation, and part of it he did an imperial for everything besides the concrete, then everything with the concrete, he uploaded a separate page, scaled it in metric and was able to output cubic meters instead of cubic yards.

Marge Haley:

Interesting. So you can have two different ones, that’s not confusing or anything.

David Livingston:

Yeah. No, not at all. No.

Marge Haley:

No, making it easy for us.

David Livingston:

Yeah.

Marge Haley:

That’s awesome. So I am sure that when you’re working with builders, you hear oftentimes that they may do one takeoff and then something may change. Then do they have to run another one? How do those adjustments take place and how does that flow back into Buildertrend making it as easy as possible for our builders?

David Livingston:

Yeah, in construction, things ebb and flow, things change, right? Code requirements are changing, so it’s really easy to go back into a pre-populated assembly. Say you measured the area for your concrete slab and you realized after you ran that, that it actually needs to be set at an eight inch depth instead of six inches. Well, you don’t have to redo the whole thing, you just open up that part and switch one of the variables to eight inches and it’s going to automatically populate quantities.

Not only that, but then when that quantity or anything inside of Takeoff is adjusted, everything in Buildertrend is also adjusted. So it’s like that harmony that I was talking about in that first piece or the first podcast, that’s where it’s at. It’s super easy to adjust on the fly, it’s also really easy to adjust the templates to fit whatever need you want.

Marge Haley:

Got it.

David Livingston:

Yeah.

Marge Haley:

So, it’s adaptable.

David Livingston:

Yeah, I mean, really at any point in time, whether it’s at the point of applying the assembly, after you’ve already applied the assembly or well before you ever apply it, you have three or four different instances of being able to adjust it and very easily populate the changes inside of Buildertrend and then Takeoff.

Marge Haley:

Excellent. That’s a great answer. Taking it back to pre-planning collaboration. How does Takeoff have involvement on that? Tell me a little bit about that.

David Livingston:

Yeah, this is something I think is really interesting, and something that any contractor can really take advantage of is these formulas allow you to really create a standardized procedure and process behind your calculations, so it’s no longer guessing. Back in the day with my landscape company, I would literally go to somebody’s property and I would just walk the perimeter and say, “It’s about 10 yards of mulch and it’s going to be four hours of labor to put it in, or that’s an underestimate, maybe seven hours or whatever, take me a day.”

Things like that cause a lot of problems, because what you’re guessing is clearly not going to be the reality of construction and of actually doing it. So by actually setting up a standard procedure, you can measure an area, say of mulch beds or say of concrete or say a linear footage of walls, and you can put in a parameter to say for every 10 feet of walls I build, it takes my crew one hour to build it.

Then based on the actual time it takes them on that job, maybe you adjust it a little bit. Say, “You know what? It actually took them two hours to do a 10 foot piece of wall.” So, you can become more and more accurate and really have a plan in place and a procedure for proper estimating, which is the goal of all of this.

Marge Haley:

Absolutely. That’s incredible. I’m sure working with builders as long as I had, a lot of people just say, “Well, I just assumed this is how many pieces of drywall I needed, or this is how many 2x4s I needed.” It’s just that guessing is a scary thing here.

David Livingston:

Yeah. You know what assuming does, Marge.

Marge Haley:

Yes, I’ve heard that line a time or two and I’m guilty of it.

David Livingston:

Yeah. Well, yeah, with my previous company, I was victim to that all the time and I never learned from my mistakes.

Marge Haley:

No.

David Livingston:

So, I think this is a cool opportunity for anybody. Especially if you’re a general contractor that self-performs some of the labor for this, being able to put up proper labor quantities and really get a good report or a good baseline for your budgeting, I think that you would be foolish not to want to do it, right?

Marge Haley:

Yeah.

David Livingston:

Currently the takeoff package really, and all things considered and the money it saves you based on all the things we’ve talked about, it’s really not that expensive.

Marge Haley:

No.

David Livingston:

Honestly, we could probably charge a lot more for it. I’m not in sales or anything, I have no opinion on that, I just support the product, but I know how much power it has.

Marge Haley:

Right. Yeah, you’re really passionate about the product and understand its value to our contractors, so putting a price tag on that is difficult, but if it brings them value and it saves them time and money, why not?

David Livingston:

Yeah, save $1,000 by checking your bids on 100 homes or say 50 homes a year.

Marge Haley:

Yeah.

David Livingston:

I mean, five homes a year, you’re basically paying for the software.

Marge Haley:

Right. Absolutely. That’s a great point. So when I was training clients, I pushed the bid feature a lot. I told clients to use our bid feature to get numbers from our subcontractors. Tell me about how with our new estimate and with our new Takeoff software, and then now with our original bids feature, how does that all go together? And how can we get numbers to our subs quicker by using those three tools?

David Livingston:

Yeah, I think there’s a lot of benefits it has. Basically if you’ve ever been in Buildertrend’s estimate tool or if you’re a new user or somebody that is considering Buildertrend and you’re watching this, I’ll kind of explain it in a simple way.

So, every line item in Buildertrend has the ability to be populated as a bid, and you can choose multiple line items in the estimate to ask pricing for. So, you could ask for a lump sum price for drywall, or you could tell them, “We need 500 sheets. What’s your price per sheet to install this?” Right? So basically, using line item actions, using real-time data that’s being created and calculated in Takeoff, you can then take those line items from Buildertrend and then line item action them to create bid packages and release those bid packages. Your subs don’t have to be active in Buildertrend. It’s just like sending out an email.

The only difference and probably the most exciting part, a little bit away from Takeoff, but I’m the estimating and takeoff specialist, so I have some leeway here. But for estimating, so when that bid comes in and you approve it, it will automatically replace the line item details in the estimate with the actual approved price from that bid. So in effect, what you’re doing is creating a fully populated estimate with real pricing from your subs with very minimal effort, really.

Marge Haley:

Yeah.

David Livingston:

Then you can use that for a client-facing estimate.

Marge Haley:

Accurate numbers, accurate dollar amounts, that’s the name of the game.

David Livingston:

It’s the name of the game.

Marge Haley:

Yeah, that’s excellent. Well, we learned a lot today. Thank you so much for being here. I am just blown away with your knowledge and with the features that Buildertrend provides. This is really cool, and I’m excited to actually learn more about this.

David Livingston:

Absolutely. Yeah, and anybody that’s watching the podcast, I’ll put a little plugin for my own thing here.

Marge Haley:

Absolutely.

David Livingston:

We do webinars every week. So, they’re conducted by myself and our takeoff support specialist, Tristan. So yeah, you can join us Monday, Wednesday or Friday for our basics and advance session. We do basics in the morning and advance in the afternoon, and then Tuesdays and Thursdays we mix it up a little bit.

This week we did joist and roof rafter tooling, and then we also did a framing Q&A. Today and this afternoon actually, I don’t know when this will be out for people, this afternoon we’re doing this thing called takeoff and estimating the bigger picture. Really understanding, not the what of how to click a button, what does it do, why we’re doing it, why is this important? Which we talked a lot about those things here today. So yeah, it’s really exciting. So if you want to join or you want to learn more, or say you sign up and you want to start your learning path, the webinars is the way to go.

Marge Haley:

Excellent.

David Livingston:

You can meet with us.

Marge Haley:

Cool. Well, check David out on his webinars, they’re super informative. Obviously, he has a wealth of knowledge on this topic and can really help you and your business get up and running with Buildertrend Takeoff and utilizing our estimate tool as well. I’m so happy that David was here to join us today, thank you so much.

David Livingston:

Absolutely. Thanks Marge. It’s been a pleasure.

Marge Haley:

This episode was excellent, we got a lot of great information. I’m excited for our builders to listen and really understand what Buildertrend Takeoff is and how it can benefit them and their company.

For you listening out there, thank you so much for being here. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to “The Better Way” wherever you get your podcasts. Next time, we’ll be talking templates and how they’re the best way to save your team time in Buildertrend. You won’t want to miss it.