2.2 KiB
id, title, tags, daily
| id | title | tags | daily |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-14T17:57:07-0400 | 2026-05-14 17:57:07 | 2026-05-14 |
2026-05-14 17:57:07
In my years of using accubid nearly every work day I've always longed for good analogies for using the wrong tools for the job. I found one that could almost be said to be in common use: "Hitting a nail with the handle of the hammer" But the phrase is not ideal for my purpose. It suggests that the tool can be used to achieve the objective, but that it is being used suboptimally. "Driving a screw with a hammer" which I came up with, though surely not for the first time, is more appropriate for Accubid and its use in construction-estimating. It suggests the tool can not be used to achieve the objective, but that it may be possible to use it to mimic success. If you manage to drive a screw with a hammer you have still failed to use it as a fastener.
Despite its name, Accubid is clearly not meant for bidding. Bidding requires an appreciation of uncertainty and risk that naive decrease-in-sigma "estimating" does nothing to assist. Estimators have to do that part, the important part, in their head.
It ought to be glaringly obvious to Trimble that their software is not being used as intended. The use of items to be budgetary of other items which are not known, or are not present in the database is perhaps universal, even though this false specificity is detrimental to both estimating and operations. Briefly sheathing hanlons-razor, I believe Trimble may be deliberately avoiding respect for uncertainty, despite demand, because to support price uncertainty would call into question the utility of their biggest earners and up-sells. Tra-Ser is the industry gold standard you can't live without, but what good is a single price, which isn't even guaranteed for purchase today, compared to a range estimated for the lifetime of the project? If you believe we live in Trimble's fantasy world where you can buy out a bid BOM as-is then they can sell you a subscription for Spectrum, their ERP software.
To really beat this analogy to death, Trimble is has a monopoly on hammers so they'd rather convince us we need a hammer than sell us the screwdriver we do need.