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id, aliases, title, tags, dg-publish
| id | aliases | title | tags | dg-publish | ||||
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| 2026-02-04 |
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2026-02-04
2026-02-04 08:07
Questions for ConEst
Purpose of ConEst
What is the purpose of ConEst? To comb for requirements Bid missed? To create the CBOM for Ops? Anything else? How do they rank in importance?
Why are other departments so confused about ConEst's purpose? (Ops stakeholder auditing CBOM to Joel: "missing screws") If we don't know, and Ops doesn't know, who does? That is, who defines our purpose?
ConEst Organization
What freedom does ConEst have to change its process and deliverables? suppose a plan to have Bid, with their request for ConEst, articulate certain requirements which they must have possessed to produce the bid estimate. Who would be involved in the change? Who would be the one to deny the request?
If Bid's proposals are audited, why do they still cause ConEst constant headache? ("local lighting control")
Estimators and seniors are biased towards imprecision because its tolerance reduces monotonous work, but the logical conclusion of such bias is a Bid estimate. Obviously there is an ideal compromise between 1:1 takeoff to install and a square foot budget that ConEst is intended to produce. Who is ultimately responsible for defining the position of that point on the spectrum? How is it defined? How is it expected to be communicated to seniors and estimators?
Process Variation
What is an acceptable level of process variance senior to senior? To my mind the answer ought to be "none" or at least "as little as possible", since our process benefits greatly from every bit of consistency we can maintain, saying nothing of the fact that there usually is a better option between two. What's being done to address the variance which exists? What's being done to prevent it from re-emerging?
It's my belief that the most practical solution is the frequent rotation of estimators in senior teams. It's in the interest of estimators that their personal heuristics not depend on who they're working for, so they can be expected to call attention to inconsistency allowing it to be addressed permanently.
The only other option I can imagine is to document exact procedures for every scenario, which is obviously foolhardy.
Less Important
Proposal Transparency
Am I alone in feeling that our proposals are deceptive beyond reasonable explanation? Would I be better of keeping my mouth shut about it?
Incentives
Bonuses based on awarded profit incentivize problematic (hare-hunting) behavior. Has such behavior been observed, or has chief strategy been organization-aligned in spite of the incentive?
2025-02-04
T-Shirt Sizing
"T-shirt sizing" or "T-shirt size estimation" is a method of project estimation characterized by the use of T-shirt sizes representing project scale buckets.
[!example]
XS (1-2 days): Simple UI changes or minor bug fixes
Example: "Update button color on checkout page"
S (2-3 days): Feature enhancements with minimal complexity
Example: "Add product sorting by price"
M (5-7 days): Features requiring moderate integration
Example: "Implement basic search filters"
L (8-10 days): Complex features affecting multiple components
Example: "Create shopping cart functionality"
XL (2+ weeks): Major features requiring breaking down
Example: "Implement payment gateway integration"
The buckets chosen should be wide enough that scale can be confidently estimated after minimal investigation.
2025-02-04 13:42
[!quote] Art Baldwin 2026-02-04 (pp.) Fire, smoke, and combination fire/smoke dampers may require 120V power, and thus electrical takeoff, or only 24V, in which case mechanical will own the scope. Assuming 120V is a budget-conservative estimating convenience, which is generally considered acceptable in lieu of determining specified requirements, but further investigation may be expected if more than a few per floor are shown.
2025-02-04 17:02
While observing takeoff for electrical-takeoff#Unit Condensing Units, the project engineer expressed confusion at the process of calculating average horizontal length, expressing that it was more complicated than they expected considering takeoff procedure for similar processes. The PE asked why we would not simply use the maximum so that we would not risk having too little overall.
Their expectation surprised me,
since it is intuitive to me
that there must be some limit to the logic of "covering it"
since it is always within our power to add contingency,
and especially because, if anything,
I feel that our procedures tend towards
the upper end of reasonable ECI.
(see 
)
My response was not well formulated.