Estimating From Outer Space

One of the most time consuming jobs to quote is a retrofit where the building has no architectural or structural drawings. There is so much involved with pricing retrofit because you have to be absolutely certain you are not overlooking anything with your proposal or you could find yourself awarded a contract and in a pile of trouble. For us in the window washing, suspended maintenance and fall protection industry, a typical site visit for pricing retrofit involves a great deal of things such as measuring window locations, sketching a roof plan from scratch, determining the roof structures, taking tons of pictures and much more. One of the most time consuming aspects of this process is sketching a well measured roof plan out and drawing in the window locations. Enter Google.

Now technology has not gotten to the point where we can price a job from outer space, but it isn't that far off really either. Google Earth and Google Streetview provide contractors working on roof tops and building facades the ability to get a scaled architectural roof plan, elevations and sometimes even a 3d virtual tour around the building.

Google Earth Software

Google Earth has always been cool. But now they are just showing off. It used to be that you could use Google Earth in conjunction with a virtual ruler / scale and use that to determine lengths of a roof top and ultimately create a working roof plan. Now you can actually draw multiple lines that Google Earth will measure for you. Essentially you trace the building outline and Google Earth measures it all for you. Let's use a Canadian landmark, First Canadian Place, as an example.




  There are three lines. Two yellow lines and a red line. The red and yellow lines that touch on the south facade of the building are saved measurements (shown as "Line Measure" in the sidebar). The yellow line on the along the western portion of the roof is a new measurement in process which shows its measurement in the popup box at the top left portion of the screen. Once the roof top is traced you want to make sure you have a good scale to work with. Note at the bottom left of the image, there is a customizable scale. At this point I am sure you get the idea. Trace the remainder of the roof, print the image on a plotter, adjust the scale as desired, and you have a working roof plan without ever visiting the site.

Now you have a roof plan and need to see what's on the building facade. Click file, View in Google Maps and go to street view.

Again, the elevation view can be used very similarly to plan view with respect to measurements essentially providing the user with a working elevation drawing.

Lastly, the users of Google Earth have created a series of 3d models for many buildings that actually use real photographs as elevations. These are fantastic for providing perspective on a particular building.

There are many other great pieces of software and technology out there for contractors to use that can help make estimating a little easier but today I have only chosen to discuss Google Earth / Streetview. It hasn't replaced my need to visit a site yet, but it definitely makes things easier. The best part is I didn't have to pay a dime for the software.

Michael Gray
Marketing and Sales Support
Ontario and Eastern Canada
Pro-Bel Enterprises Ltd
e: mikegray@pro-bel.ca
t: @Pro_Bel
w: http://www.pro-belgroup.com/