African Experiences
African Experiences
Rosemargaret Esubonteng from OshDarley Consult in Ghana shares her experiences of using Masterbill software
At our User Conference in Edinburgh last year we asked Rosemargaret Esubonteng from OshDarley Consult in Ghana to share with us some of her experiences of using Masterbill software since April 2008 and has agreed that we can now share them more widely.
Rosemargaret began by explaining that the driving factors behind their adoption of Masterbill in 2008 had been the fact that their volume of work was increasing and they needed to be able to produce BQs quickly, manage their staff numbers and be generally more efficient as they carried out QS duties on Office, Educational Facilities and Housing Projects.
Rosemargaret then proceeded to tell us the following stories to highlight the benefits of the Masterbill Elite and QSCad software they use.
The Office Project A contact called in July last year about a project on which he was running late. He was measuring a ten storey office complex and had already had all his own QSs and some external freelance QSs working on measuring the project for 7 weeks but abstracting and billing had not yet started. One weekend in an effort to finish the measurement some of the QSs took the drawings and measurements home. Early on Monday morning one staff member collected all the documents and on his way back to the office stopped off to attend to another errand, he returned to his car a few minutes later only to find that his car had been broken into and his briefcase together with all the measurements had been stolen. Faced with the prospect of 7 weeks work being lost they consulted the Architect who suggested that they turn to OshDarley Consult to see if they could help in any way as they were using Masterbill and he had witnessed the fact that this reduced their BQ production time significantly on a previous project. After some discussion and negotiation OshDarley Consult agreed to prepare the BQ for them based upon the 122 drawings provided. By making use of QSCad for measurement and Masterbill Elite for BQ Production OshDarley used just 4 staff to complete the Project in just 5 weeks. The result – an extremely happy contact and client who are now both considering how Masterbill software could bring benefits to their organisations. The University Project OshDarley Consult have also used Masterbill Software to carry out work on a New University Campus including Lecture Halls, an Administration Block, Student Accommodation and the associated External Works. Rosemargaret told us how they had made use of the Revision features within QSCad to copy measurements from one revision to the next and adapt them to suit the new revision as each revision was issued and how they were able to make use of the Library of Description features within Masterbill Elite to simply amend descriptions to keep up with the specification changes. All in all, Rosemargaret reported that Masterbill software had made it possible to achieve the tight timescales on this project and cope with the numerous changes to the Drawings and Specifications without losing track of the measurements. OshDarley Consult have identified the following Key Benefits of using our Masterbill Elite and QSCad software in their practice: Rosemargaret was also keen to stress that it is important though that QSs still ensure that they check their quantities and descriptions prior to issuing the BQ and of course that a good backup regime is crucial if you do not wish to end up like the contact in her first story.
The project programme allowed very little time for Pre-Contract work due to the facilities being required by June 2011, this resulted in OshDarley measuring from drawings as they were being issued rather than waiting for a complete package and hence having to cope with multiple revisions. There were also numerous changes to the Specifications during this period resulting in numerous changes to measurements and descriptions.
.gif)
