Assemblies in construction estimating are THE power tool in a construction estimators tool box. They speed up the estimating process and improve the accuracy of the estimates.

Without assemblies the estimating process is wide open to potential errors. For example, if you’re taking off a 2×4 wall you have to do the top plate, the bottom plate, studs, drywall, tape and so on. If you forget one piece or mis-measure just one piece your whole wall is not going to be priced right.

Construction Plans

An assembly contains all of the materials and labor necessary for a particular operation, like the 2×4 wall. This means that one takeoff dimension includes all the items and labor necessary.

There are three types of assemblies:

• Basic assemblies where the cost for all the parts are are prefigured into on dollar amount for each unit. The amounts are usually broken down into materials, labor, equipment, subcontract and miscellaneous.
• The difficulty with this type of assembly is when material prices change you have to manually recalculate the cost per unit and update the assembly. If the material whos price has changed is used across many assemblies, it can be a real chore.
• Simple assemblies list each of the materials, and labor, that are used to make up the item. It’s essentially a list of items that are all combined at estimating time to create a price
• Each of the material items is listed separately which means that when a price changes it only needs to be changed in one place.
• You can produce a material list of all the individual items for either getting prices or ordering materials, or both.
• Quantities of each of the items can only be numeric, like 1 or 1.593 or 6.434, etc. You can’t have equations in the quantity fields.
• Extended assemblies are the same as Simple assemblies with one very important difference. Quantity fields can be complex equations. For example:
• A concrete slab that has 3 dimensions
• A roof that has slope can be calculated using the rise and the run.
• Anything you can enter in a spreadsheet cell can be used in an extended assembly

Assemblies are THE power tool because they speed up the estimating process dramatically and the reduce errors because everything is taken off with one number.

Discover how you can use assemblies in LiteningFast Estimating, click here.

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