It is a common problem for us Construction Industry Professionals to experience file organization issues. As a technical staff in our field, our boss normally load us tons of responsibilities which involves critical thinking and decision makings and many more especially when you are employed in a small-scale construction firm.

With all these numerous daily tasks, and piles of documents on our tables, we tend to lose important files which is a disaster we don’t want our boss to know, otherwise, we would see him again in his beast mode ready to lash us out.

 Imagine the time you lost during your search, and it’s not guaranteed to find it in quickest possible time. Not counting the time you have consumed during your manual computations, the time you spent writing, erasing and editing incorrect numbers and mathematical operations all by hand.

As engineers, managers, estimators, it is our goal to achieve project costs not greater than the company’s budget or the client’s allocation, otherwise, we are doing it ineffectively and that’s when a new challenge is coming in, when you are all done with your materials and cost estimates only to find out the total costs is way more or less than the budget. now the struggle continues when you need to scan all over your computations and choose which item to adjust to fit the target amount.

Yes, you may be one of those people who would say, “It’s easier for me to understand what i am doing when I am writing things down and you really are into computing your estimates manually.

But doesn’t it give you freedom when you don’t need to bring bulky files of computations whenever you go for a pre-construction self study or in a meeting? when you don’t need to worry about having those computations lost because it’s just right there in your device ready to be opened or reproduced anytime and anywhere?

Ok let’s say, excel is not new to you. you already have a knowledge with this excel functions, you already made some of computations using excel but you haven’t made your very own professional-looking project estimation and report templates yet because you are just confused and overwhelmed by the massive information you get over the internet which lead you to nowhere but stacked and don’t know where to start. Or simply you just don’t have enough time to do it.

Yes, i know that very feeling, “been there, done that” and i already freed myself from all these struggles.

I have been working as a civil engineer for almost 11 years now, and I have discovered the benefits of estimating and preparing reports using spreadsheets of Microsoft Excel. Upon learning the skills to manipulate functions, in a lesser time, I am able to finish the estimating jobs, preparation of Program of Works and Reports for my boss and, other clients on the side with the most accessible, precise and presentable results all because of this tool (Microsoft Excel).