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Putting Bluebeam’s Takeoff Tools to the Test: Quantity Surveyor Calculates Takeoffs 70% Faster with Revu
Angus Cockburn is a Quantity Surveyor with over 35 years experience. A few weeks after switching to Bluebeam PDF Revu for electronic takeoffs, he received an urgent call from a flooring contractor. The contractor wanted Angus to help him bid on a four-floor, 1,500 room London hospital. He needed Angus to provide measurements for 10 different floor coverings. The only hitch - the bid deadline was three days away.
“It would have taken me two weeks to complete this job by hand,” said Angus. “I knew the only way I could meet the deadline was by performing the measurements electronically. But since I hadn’t yet had a chance to use Bluebeam extensively, I wasn’t completely sure it was robust enough for this job. It was a trial by fire.”
Over the next few days Angus used Bluebeam’s measurement tool to place over 2,700 area and perimeter annotations on PDF copies of the bid drawings. Bluebeam also includes a counter and performs length, diameter, angle and volume measurements, but these annotations weren’t required for this project.
For every drawing, Angus used the built-in calibration feature to define the actual scale by choosing a length from the drawing with a known value. The ability to accurately set the scale for an entire drawing saved Angus a tremendous amount of time. He also customized the color of each annotation. By selecting a color from Bluebeam’s toolbar, he coded his drawing so that each flooring type was represented by a different hue. Finally, as Angus used Bluebeam to calculate measurements, he entered in the values into an Excel document, which he later imported into Atlantis QSPro to create a Bill of Quantities. “Since I was so new to Bluebeam, I didn’t know that Revu tracks all the markups in a list which can be exported into a .CSV file. Now that I do know, I will save even more time by eliminating another step,” said Angus.
At the end of day three, the verdict was in. Not only did Bluebeam enable Angus to complete the job on time, it also helped him perform takeoffs 70% faster than he could have by hand. “I was originally attracted to Bluebeam because of its takeoff capabilities and its price. Bluebeam has since shown me that it’s much more than an affordable solution for performing electronic takeoffs. It’s an intuitive tool that has helped me meet deadlines and save a lot of time.” Angus said.
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