That time a foreman told me my takeoff software was garbage and he was dead right
I've been using Yardi for takeoffs on a job down in Tucson for about 8 months now. This old school foreman, Mike, saw me struggling with a concrete square footage estimate and just laughed. He said 'son, that program's gonna get you every time because it doesn't handle slope right.' I told him I'd been using it fine for years. But after 3 messed up pour orders and a $2,000 overrun on a slab last Thursday, I went back and checked. Sure enough, the software was rounding off a 3 degree slope to flat. Mike watched me redo it by hand and the numbers came out totally different. Has anyone else had a routine update or default setting in their estimating software screw you on something you thought was solid?
Mike was using an old school method, right? Did he show you the exact formula he used to factor in that 3 degree slope, or was it just a rule of thumb he's learned over the years? I'm curious because if it was a specific calculation, like adding 0.523% for every degree over flat, that would be gold to know. The bigger question is whether Yardi actually has a slope correction toggle hidden somewhere in the settings, or if it's just flat out broken on sloped calculations. Because if they know about this bug and haven't fixed it, that's a lawsuit waiting to happen on a bigger job.