At SoftwareAdvice, we recently conducted a two-month long construction estimating survey. We put together the survey as a way for construction firms to report on how well their estimating methods are working for them. We also wanted to provide the industry with a set of benchmarks that firms can use to compare their estimating processes against industry standards.
After closing out the survey, we compiled responses from more than 100 construction firms and recently published our findings, which I’d like to share here.
The respondents to our survey spanned across a variety of trades and company sizes with construction managers and general contractors representing the highest number of respondents.
Of course, one of the major things that we wanted to know was which method firms used to estimate their jobs, and whether it was effective. Interestingly, we found that the jury is out on whether spreadsheets are an effective method of estimating. Respondents were evenly split as to whether spreadsheets are effective. However, the majority of estimating software users were satisfied with their system.