Masonry Magazine December 2002 Page. 36
TECH
TOOLS
Datastream
There's not a mason contractor out there who hasn't made a mistake, and the result is money out of his pocket.
Tradesman's system is an estimating program that allows you to see the actual project as you do your takeoffs. This gives you an instant visual feedback. Pacetti says, "Some products will show lines like you're looking at a floor plan. They show different color lines that represent certain things. This is good, visual feedback. We went 10 steps further-we put it into 3D."
You see a representation of the actual wall, its material, colors, bonding, openings, offsets, slopes and so forth. This helps eliminate mistakes. "There's not a mason contractor out there who hasn't made a mistake," acknowledges Pacetti. "And the result is money out of his pocket. It could be a couple dollars, or a couple hundred thousand dollars. It could be enough to put a person out of business. There are contractors who'll spend a couple of days doing an estimate, then a couple more having a second estimator to go over the first estimator's takeoff."
That's certainly not conducive to increased productivity. Pacetti offers an alternative, saying, "You takeoff the project with our 3D estimating and you can view that total project; grab it with the mouse, spin the building around, see it and zoom in on the sections of interest. You can use our walk-through viewer and walk through your finished takeoff and see the money items is there a glazed tile base or bond beams in the wall that need to be filled up with grout and rods. Our program will calculate and show you those pieces."
Tradesman's also offers a program for design/build. "It's good for doing mock-ups on the fly," claims Pacetti. "You can create a mock-up of a prospective building in 15-20 minutes. Then you have something ready to show prospective customers. You also have a bottom-line bid price in 20 minutes. Some of our customers are taking a laptop and putting a project on the screen so the architect and owner are impressed."
But impressions aren't the only thing that wins jobs. Pacetti continues, "Then the architect or owner starts with a series of 'what if questions. What if we make this change? Click on the program, make the change, and they're viewing the material items added into the project and instantly getting a bottom line estimate update."
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