All Forum Posts by: Aaron McGinnis

 Square is expressly for on screen take off; so any time you're doing a quantity survey from plans it's going to be helpful. 

Since this thread got started, Square was purchased by Buildertrend and is now Buildertrend Takeoff. I'm not sure if it is available as a stand-alone product anymore.

 Daniel -

Yes, I switched to Square about a year and a half ago. Planswift is a dead platform from a technology standpoint, and it didn't make sense to continue to develop it.

So far, Square has a few issues and I have to do some work-arounds to get past some interface and data management issues, but I would not go back to Planswift. Migration took a lot of effort, and I had to learn some new work flows, but ultimately the switch over was completely worth it. 

Basically, if you get a really big take off that is multi-stage, data management becomes really hard in Square... so I end up doing multiple iterations of the same job, one for trim, doors, and windows, another for lumber, another for siding, etc. 

That being said, the reporting is so much cleaner and easier out of the box vs. planswift that it made me weep a little when I first used it. You do have to be very rigorous about how you set up your assemblies and parts to make it work, though. Much like planswift (and any advanced program), there is a learning curve and you must be fastidious in the way you set things up.

One of the biggest issues I had with Planswift was that it was simply structurally obsolete. No [native] data sharing, a code base based on Cobol and Visual Basic (I wish I was kidding), and zero interest in the platform from the company that owns it. Every time windows updated, I lived in fear that Planswift would finally stop being forward compatible. The clock is ticking on that entire code base. 

Ironically, a lot of the good developers from Planswift went to Square. It really is the spiritual successor...

... soil contamination, airborne particles, neighbors, worker safety... The fact that you're razing the house actually makes it worse. The amount of dust created by a steel track backhoe when it wrecks a house is tremendous. Trying to think of ways to avoid doing the right thing and potentially making that dust cloud toxic is absolutely repugnant and the kind of behaviour that gives decently-minded investors and contractors a bad name.

I am literally the last person on earth who loves regulations, but in the case of asbestos the regulations are there for a good reason. Asbestos is a known toxic carcinogen at its most deadly when it becomes particalized... which is exactly what happens to it when you demolish a house.

What you're asking for isn't 'creative'... I'd call it, 'unethical and illegal'

Do the right thing for the workers and future home owners: Test honestly, react appropriately. 

Most of the time when a house gets gutted to the skeleton, it's because there was asbestos and it had to be remediated.

Why would "Have 5 employees" be an actual business goal for you?

Lumber *futures* have declined. Shelf prices have not caught up to futures.

Futures are down, shelf prices are actually up from last month. The word I have from my suppliers is that we shouldn't expect shelf prices to drop considerably for a few months, at least.

We tried it for a year... It's a tremendous waste of money. Half the leads are phony and the other half only want to work with you if you're willing to pay them to do their job.

Another vote for Chase ink. We have a corporate card and rack up buku points, which I then transfer to my personal chase sapphire preferred card and use to book airfare on skyteam airlines (United, Singapore Air, All Nippon, Lufthansa, Southwest

Once you buy general liability (or worker's comp) insurance, every check you cut will be audited by the insurance company to make sure that it was cut to an insured entity. If the entity wasn't insured, you're going to pay extra to your insurance company.

This eliminates most of the cheap subcontractors of the world, as they rarely have the proper insurance, because it's expensive.