That time a foreman told me my takeoff software was garbage and he was dead right

I've been using Yardi for takeoffs on a job down in Tucson for about 8 months now. This old school foreman, Mike, saw me struggling with a concrete square footage estimate and just laughed. He said 'son, that program's gonna get you every time because it doesn't handle slope right.' I told him I'd been using it fine for years. But after 3 messed up pour orders and a $2,000 overrun on a slab last Thursday, I went back and checked. Sure enough, the software was rounding off a 3 degree slope to flat. Mike watched me redo it by hand and the numbers came out totally different. Has anyone else had a routine update or default setting in their estimating software screw you on something you thought was solid?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_ryan3d ago

Mike was using an old school method, right? Did he show you the exact formula he used to factor in that 3 degree slope, or was it just a rule of thumb he's learned over the years? I'm curious because if it was a specific calculation, like adding 0.523% for every degree over flat, that would be gold to know. The bigger question is whether Yardi actually has a slope correction toggle hidden somewhere in the settings, or if it's just flat out broken on sloped calculations. Because if they know about this bug and haven't fixed it, that's a lawsuit waiting to happen on a bigger job.

the_seth3d ago

Man, that's a really good point about the lawsuit angle. It's crazy they'd leave a known issue like that in the software.