Expert Estimation Reviewer's Comments

Expert Estimation, our #7-ranked construction estimation software product, was developed in Australia. It hosts many outstanding features, but due to inconsistencies in terminology between the United States and Australia, the software is slightly difficult to comprehend.

Feature Set:  

Expert Estimation houses many useful features and applications. These features include the fact that the data is fully net-workable and there are multi-currency capabilities. It hosts the ability to define a percentage markup, handle rate-only items, calculate the interest cost or income from the calculated cash flow, and perform provisional sums. It includes quantity takeoff, budget-calculation and quotation-analysis facilities. It also displays available rates and totals for all items in the tender submission schedule and includes 9999 levels of group resources. It enables you to enter program/item relationships and produce cash and resource flows.

There are helpful flag functions to aid in distinguishing priced items and current states of the tender's data. This program has many other features as well, including the ability to copy from one tender to another and to enter cost-code for field-budget preparation.

There is a helpful INFO screen where you can add and edit any information you desire. It can hold production rates, subcontractor names, and reinforcing steel weights. All reports can be viewed before printing to a printer, file or spreadsheet. As added security for your projects, you may conduct a backup procedure and update your resource compilation at anytime.

Expert Estimation has the ability to reproduce most of the forms used by many of Australia's leading construction companies. All the forms collate electronically from a direct cost estimate sheet to the direct cost summary to the tender summary, and finally, to the tender schedule.

Ease of Use:  

Participation in the available training course is highly recommended. With no prior estimating experience, this program would be very difficult to navigate and comprehend. Even with extensive experience with construction estimating programs, we found the program to be very difficult.

Ease of Installation:  

Expert Estimation is easy to install; we encountered no problems.

Help/Support:  

Expert Estimation contains a context-sensitive help section and "tips" popup windows. There is also a "getting started" section which promotes you from screen to screen, attempting to explain the functions relating to each screen. However, we found the instructions difficult to understand and apply. An outline of steps required to formulate an estimate would be very beneficial. Expert Estimation provides a 1 day hands-on training course conducted by specialized professional computer trainers. There is also a comprehensive training manual & a copy of exercise projects for later use.

Summary:  

Expert Estimation contains the standard features found in other construction estimation programs, but the terminology and logic-flow pattern differences of this Australia-based software are fundamental hindrances to the use of this program. It is difficult to navigate and may require reworking procedures to fully benefit from the program. This program is better suited for Australian rather than American construction companies.