I BECAME A TRAINEE ELECTRICAL ESTIMATOR IN NOVEMBER 1980. Of course, all our bid documents were paper. We had reams of paper specification books and rooms full of paper plan sets. At that time, it all seemed normal. The only thing I had against paper plans then was my tendency to get deep paper cuts from them. Paper was the standard throughout my career as an employee, continuing on into the establishment of my consulting company in 1994 and into the early 2000s. Around that time, I became aware of a software program that would allow me to count and measure on a screen instead of paper, so I downloaded a two-week free trial. This was the first software program I ever had trouble learning to use with no training. Part of the problem was it used language different from the electrical estimating terminology I was familiar with. I also thought the software and training was very expensive, so I decided not to buy it.
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