RE: ESTIMATION PROGRAM

From: <Steve>
Date: Tue Feb 03 2004 - 18:43:00 EST

Gordon
I have two of Pages books; the conceptual cost estimating manual and the estimators manhour manual (HVAC and plumbing) which has a bit more detail on piping and the like. I find neither particularly accurate, but they are better than nothing. For example 82 hours to make and fit a 200hp V-belt motor guard is just plain ridiculous, even with a 70% efficiency factor built in.
  If you have the full set, and nothing better to do could you compare the piping manhour manual and the HVAC& plumbing manual, and let me know if the piping man-hour manual has anything useful to add. I vaguely remember looking at the piping manual years ago and deciding it had nothing particularly useful to add.

Cheers

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Gordon.Reddek@Alcan.com [mailto:Gordon.Reddek@Alcan.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 11:48 AM To: PipingDesign@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [PipingDesign] ESTIMATION PROGRAM

JiJoy,

We happen to have the Gulf Publishing Company series of books in our library mentioned by Steve. The one he mentions covers estimating on a very high level where one uses graphs to predict costs from very basic information. There is another in the series called "Estimator's Piping Man-hour Manual" which is just that. It gives man hour estimates for absolutely everything to do with piping. With this book and material prices from your suppliers you should be able to come up with the usual detailed estimate using a spreadsheet.
Details of the book are:
ISBN 0-87201-708-7
GULF PUBLISHING COMPANY
Author: John S. Page

My experience with estimating packages is that they are programs written by companies to develop their own business and they seldom make them available if they are any good. If they do, you get it WITHOUT the database of man-hours and prices, which is the heart of the program. Lets face it, if they give you the whole program you have all the tools you need to put them out of business. Would you do that?.

I think I have seen shareware and freeware packages and even free spreadsheets on freeware and shareware sites in the past. You could conceivably use them as a template and populate it with man-hours from the book above and material prices from your suppliers. I would also get the book Steve mentioned because it would be a good way to check the magnitude of your final estimate. His Book has the ISBN 0-87201-134-8. I have not looked for shareware or freeware lately but the relevant sites are easily found by surfing for same on Google.com

Hope that helps

Gordon

"Jijoy Pillai" <jijoy@mis.co.ae>
03/02/2004 04:08 PM
Please respond to PipingDesign

         To:     "PIPING DESIGN" <PipingDesign@yahoogroups.com>
         cc:
         Subject:        [PipingDesign] ESTIMATION PROGRAM


I would like a get a estimating software for piping. to calculate the cost, no of flanges,weldolets, sockolets, elbows etc man hours taken for construction etc.....,
or a bidding software.

can anyone tell me some site where I can get one to try.

Any response will be tremendously appreciated

Thanks

JIJOY
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Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:   http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Received on Tue Feb 03 18:43:00 2004

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