Estimating makes or breaks a builder. A reputation for good craftsmanship may get you in the door, but your price gets you the job. The hours spent estimating are especially dear to small companies where the owner does a little bit of everything. After working all day on the site and meeting with clients in the late afternoon, many small builders spend the evening working up prices. But after all this hard work, even a good estimator lands only about 25% of the jobs he prices; time spent estimating the others is wasted. That's why every builder dreams of finding a faster way to estimate costs without compromising accuracy. Everybody has their own way of estimating, but most
