I have been an electrical estimator for over 30 years. Not only was electrical estimating software not readily available, but even the use of computers in the electrical construction industry were rare at best. I have been lucky to be a part of the growth of computer estimating. My first experience with electrical estimating software came from a door to door sales person knocking on the doors of electrical contractors at random. I told them that we didn’t even have a computer to watch his demo. He told us he had a computer in his car and if we would allow he would show us what he had to offer.
I was so aggravated with the tedious chore of creating estimates for electrical projects that I took the time to listen. Remember at this time our company didn’t even own a computer let alone a computer for estimating electrical projects. He set up and did his dog and pony show and when he was finished honestly I didn’t understand any part of it but I did ask a price. If I remember correctly he wanted $10,000.00 dollars for this software. At this time of my electrical career you might as well said $1,000,000.00. It was more money than I could afford to spend especially not even owning a computer.
Even though I didn’t understand, nor could afford this new product for estimating electrical work, it did plant a seed that there could be a better way to estimate than we were doing at the present. I just assumed that electrical estimating was long tedious boring work of writing page after page of items down then looking up the prices and man hours for each of these items.
We had streamlined the process over the years, as much as we could, by creating a master list of products with pricing and man-hours already installed. This was helpful but keeping the prices updated was not an easy task and extending all these numbers without error wasn’t easy as well.
We saw that the move to computers was going to be inevitable. I must admit that I had a computer on my desk 6 months before I had the nerve to turn it on. I remember there was software on it called Word Perfect. I believe it was a precursor to Word that most of us use today.
We had an IT company come and install Microsoft Office on our computers and I discovered Excel.
It didn’t take long to see just how powerful Excel was in speeding up Electrical Estimating. I started spending all of my down time learning how to use Excel to help with my electrical estimating.
I remembered the $10K electrical estimating software and what it was supposed to do to speed up your estimating process. I then took Excel to a different level creating my first project with over 100 pages of Excel and Visual Basic formulas. It helped speed up our electrical estimating better than we could have ever imagined. I showed this first project to some other electrical contractors and I still remember the smiles on their faces.
After building this 1st project I started imagining what a real store bought electrical estimating software must be able to do for us and we bought one.
It did look like an electrical estimating software and it would do more that the Excel Spread sheet project that I built, but it was very difficult to use and learn. It had way too many screens and way too complicated. The software did so much of what I didn’t need it to do and would not do so many things that I did need it to do. It was much slower than just using the Excel sheets.
I started thinking of the good points that this software offered and what was missing that seemed obvious to me.
I created a list of things that were actually wrong with the electrical program including a list of bugs.
I then created a list of the changes that I saw that need to happen to make this a much better electrical estimating product.
We sent the list to the software company and asked how much they would charge us to make these changes to their electrical estimating software. We didn’t expect it to be cheap and we were un educated in what we were asking but we needed this product. The answer we received was a God send. You could not afford it and if you could we still would not do it!
This rejection started the birth of what is now the Best Bid Hybrid Pro. It wasn’t an easy journey creating a top rated electrical estimating software without a clue of the process but we did it.
When creating Best Bid we took all the things that we didn’t like from the other electrical software products and combined all the things that we did like then we added what we personally needed that we thought was missing and created what we believe is the most user and cost friendly electrical software that you can purchase today.
When you purchase the Best Bid Hybrid Pro you can be sure that you are purchasing the latest in electrical software advancements. When new technology is available we add it and you receive it free of charge.
We understand that everyone estimates differently and we have made the Best Bid Hybrid pro the most flexible software for computerized electrical estimating possible. You can turn our software into your personal estimating software for your electrical projects.
At Best Bid we have been blessed and we like to give back. This is why we are priced 1/3 the cost of other software that don’t offer nearly as much as we do.
We also don’t charge for Extra License, Technical Support, or Software updates. Yes, all is included in one posted low price. No games or hidden fees with us.
Best Bid Electrical Estimating Software. We can teach you how to estimate or estimate better.
