Frequently Asked Questions

These spreadsheets have been developed by someone who has been estimating communications cabling projects for 18 years of an over 25 year career working as an installation technician, foreman/supervisor, project manager, estimator and consultant primarily in communications/structured cabling spanning a huge range of industry including small to large commercial, mining and defence installations. The superior and easy-to-use breakdowns and layout of the estimating template and the generic labour rates included reflect the developer's many years of experience with estimating, materials ordering and project management in mind. With a one off purchase price worth less than a handful of hours of your time, you can be estimating straight away and not wasting valuable time developing your own estimating template and wasting years of trial and error developing your own generic/average labour installation rates. Because of the way the estimating template is broken down into individual materials it can also serve as a checklist when ordering materials and summary page labour totals can be used when scheduling labour for a successfully tendered project. It is also beneficial for project management of the project as detailed below.

You will need to understand written English language.To input the required data you will only need basic spreadsheet skills and enough trade knowledge or estimating experience to evaluate the outcomes produced by the spreadsheets. The user will have to be experienced enough to know exactly what materials quantities are required to input into the template and to weigh up the outcomes produced by the auto-calculating labour installation rates. Although the loaded generic labour installation rates are very sound and based on over 25 years experience, they may not work for every single situation and it is up to the user to adjust them if they are not suitable for their requirements.There are some instructions on each page and there are plenty of side notes within the template to assist with use. All cells that need input are highlighted for ease of use: Green highlighting for QUANTITIES, grey for MATERIALS cost and mark up percentage, yellow for LABOUR unit rates, cost rates and charge out rates. You will also receive a sample which has been populated as a sample quotation, this will again assist with using and understanding the spreadsheets. While some spreadsheets can be really complicated this one has intentionally been designed for simplicity of use - it really is just data entry of materials, quantities and costs and adjusting percentages and rates where and if required for your particular requirements. Everything else is auto calculating. The spreadsheets are also protected so no errors in formulas can accidentally be made.

It can be used by building designers, consultants, architects etc. to put together budget figures or to cross-check subcontractor pricing. It is particularly useful for project managers for reasons outlined in the next question below. It can be used by communications cabling companies who already have extensive estimating software to do sanity checks for accuracy of the software outcomes.

If the original estimate was made using the spreadsheet the project manager can use the breakdowns of labour and materials the spreadsheet produces to drive and track their project. Plus these hours can be used to forecast project duration. New project materials pricing can be easily added and a revision of labour and forecast of profit margin can be made. The automatically generated breakdown subtotals of hours for cable rough-in, terminations, testing etc. from the individual section pages can be used to drive the installation team to make targets for completion within each area of the project. Actual installation rates can then be documented, compared, evaluated and then adjusted for future estimates or to highlight installation problem areas. It can be used for producing project variations. It can be used as an "hours to go" calculator. Just input the quantities of materials yet to be installed and let the labour rates give you an estimate of hours to completion. Even if your original estimate was made from other estimating software it can be a good exercise for a project manager to use the total dollar figure available to rebuild the project amount using this spreadsheet adding their revised project materials pricing and quantities so that the spreadsheet can be used for exactly the purposes as described in the points above. The project manager then has a full overview and greater perspective of the project at their finger tips.

This spreadsheet template was recently tested by a customer against a very large and experienced contractors overall price on a communications project worth approximately $2.4M and came in with a very impressive variance of less than 0.11% of the contractor's price. However, these rates have been generated as averages for experienced installation teams but as any experienced estimator knows these rates may have to be adjusted to suit some installations and it is up to the user to determine if they are suitable or need adjusting. There can be many variables that affect rates including slightly varying installation times between differing brands and manufacturers, competency of installers, management of installers etc. These rates present however as good generic averages and allowances for some variances have been included, for example there are three levels of difficulty for internal cable rough in labour rates to choose from (easy, average and difficult) so the estimator has a choice by typing quantities of cable against either one. The user has the flexibility, for example, of selecting 80% of the cabling rough in as average and 20% as difficult if desired, simply by splitting up the quantities against each line item. In the end the estimator is responsible for weighing up outcomes but the way this template breaks everything down into smaller areas helps get better perspective with the outcomes as each area can easily be weighed up separately as if it is a smaller project within the project. We have made this template as simple to use as possible.

Please see the website home page for the description of each area/page/section of the template. Additionally to the populated pages there are five more spare pages for you to populate with other areas of your work for example CCTV, Security, MATV/AV, Electrical and Lighting. You will however have to input your own labor installation rates, line item descriptions and pricing to these pages and you can lay them out in a way that suits you. All of the spare pages are formatted so that the data will be automatically reflected also onto the Summaries and Customer breakdown pages.

Every effort has been made to be as thorough as possible so that no errors exist within the protected spreadsheet template. However, If you believe you have found an error please let us know and we will investigate and rectify it if we deem it to be an error.

You will be able to use the spreadsheet on any device with Microsoft Excel installed. No MAC version is yet available. No PC, MAC or other devices or Microsoft software are included with the purchase of this product.

No. Although it is very comprehensive the spreadsheet is designed to cover the majority of the more common installation items required to be installed in a commercial structured cabling project. However, any additional items can easily be added by the user as there are hundreds of hidden additional spare line items spread throughout the template ready to be unhidden and populated if additional items are required.

The protection locks all of the formulas in the spreadsheet so they cannot be changed to minimize accidental errors in the sheet by the user. When delivering your estimate to your customer only the Letter of offer page and / or the Customer breakdown page should be changed to PDF format for delivery. The password to unlock each page will be listed on the download page after purchase. This gives you the flexibility to modify or customise your spreadsheet further.

The application comes in Metric $ and Imperial $ versions for use in different countries but you can change the appropriate cells in the spreadsheet to reflect other currencies as you normally would with Excel and then use that as your master template. Some examples would be Metric $ version for use in Australia and New Zealand, a Metric £ version for use in the UK and an Imperial $ version for use in the US..

No. The sale of the spreadsheet is covered by copywrite laws and when you purchase the spreadsheet you will be accepting terms and conditions stating that you will be financially liable if you sell or share the spreadsheet. You can however for personal use only, copy and rename the spreadsheet as many times as required to create your seperate estimates. You will only share the outcomes of the spreadsheet with your customer when you PDF the Customer letter of offer page or the Customer breakdown page. The Excel copy should never be sent to the customer when providing an estimate.

No, the spreadsheet is only available in an English language version and all communication with the seller must be in the English language only.