A NIGHTMARE ON "SPREADSHEET"
Have you experienced “A Nightmare on Spreadsheet”? Recently, we heard from a chief estimator that just experienced this nightmare. After a team of estimators invested 100s hours in developing a project bid, which included identifying the scope, performing a quantity takeoff, and then doing their best to manage the subcontractor selection process, they missed the deadline for submitting the bid. In other words, they missed out on a project that had a fee of over three million dollars.
Why did they miss the deadline? It was a large project, with many different trades / bid tabs. They were doing what their company had done for years, managing the bid day process in a “home grown” generic spreadsheet solution. As often happens, they were getting bids coming in from subcontractors right up to the last minute. After entering the last few bids, they noticed that their overall bid total was not being updated correctly. They determined that the spreadsheet most likely contained a bad link or a bad formula. That is not a surprise. A recent compilation of 7 field studies found errors in 88% of all audited spreadsheets. In this case, as the team wasin the process of trying to track down the error, the bid submission deadline passed.
In the missed project opportunity detailed above, the lead estimator communicated that he was not looking forward to going in front of the management “firing squad”, to try and explain how the company missed out on this opportunity.
The truth is, generic spreadsheets are not designed to handle the specific challenges encountered on “bid-day”. The chaotic nature of closing out a bid most often requires collaboration amongst a team of estimators and project managers. This team is entering bids of all types, lump sum bids, detailed bids, bids with incomplete scope, etc. A bid entered at the last minute, by a single team member could make all previous bid totals obsolete. The last thing you need is to submit an incorrect bid due to a spreadsheet error. After all, a company’s success is tied to getting awarded work at the right price.
It used to be that you had no alternative but to use spreadsheets to “close out” project bids, but that is no longer the case. BidMatrix, developed by Bridgetown Software, is a purpose-built application designed to tackle all the complexities associated with bid-day.