Rant: Skeptical about those fancy estimating apps, now I'm a believer

I spent years doing takeoffs by hand with a digitizer, thought software was just a gimmick. Then my boss made me try PlanSwift on a 50-unit apartment bid last month and I finished the estimate in 3 hours instead of 2 days. Has anyone else had that moment where a tool you hated actually worked out?

2 comments

2 Comments

morgan.charlie27d ago

Pretty sure PlanSwift is actually owned by Trimble now, not the same company that made it years ago. I picked up on that when I finally gave in and tried it last spring on a church renovation bid. The assembly features saved me from measuring every damn window and door individually, which was the real game changer for me. Old habits die hard though, still keep a printed backup just in case the wifi decides to take a nap.

wadeyoung27d ago

Did it actually speed up your takeoff that much? Three hours versus two days sounds too good to be true, but I had a similar experience switching from paper to software last year. I fought it for years because I trusted my own measurements and thought the computer would mess something up. Turns out I was wrong. The real kicker was how it caught mistakes in my manual counts, things I would have never noticed until the lumber showed up short on site. I still double check a few things by hand, but I would never go back to the old way.