The push for full digital takeoffs is leaving some good people behind

In my experience, our small firm in Boise tried to switch to a fully digital takeoff system over 6 months. The software itself was fine, but we lost two of our best senior estimators who just couldn't get comfortable with it, despite the training. They had 30 years of field experience between them, and their gut feel for material waste was often more accurate than the software's perfect-world math. Now we're down that institutional knowledge, and I think the industry's rush to 100% digital is causing this everywhere. Has anyone else found a good way to blend old-school experience with new tech without forcing people out?

3 comments

3 Comments

abby_morgan181mo ago

Lost two senior guys? That's insane.

jennifer_jones171mo ago

Ugh that's rough. I mean what if the software just gave them a number and they could tweak it with a note like "add 5% for site conditions"? Best of both worlds maybe.

young.ryan1mo ago

Yeah that "best of both worlds" idea from @jennifer_jones17 is actually pretty smart. Let the software do the heavy lifting but keep a human check on it.