One of the most difficult processes you often find in construction is estimating the cut and fill quantities required to grade the building site which can be made much simpler if you prefer to use estimating software. A site has to be graded before you try to build a strip mall, a parking lot, an office building or any other structure for that matter. Other things often associated with the construction of a building like calculating building materials, number of doors and windows and areas to be painted and very simple when compared to this. This is because in almost all cases the site will be having a surface which is irregular in shape. This makes the dirt that must be removed from the site or brought in very difficult to determine.
Basically there are three main ways you can calculate this. Each of these will be explained here in detail. The first two are manual methods whereas the third one is an automated method making use of estimating software.
The first method to calculate cut and fill for the building site is called a grid method. Here the site is divided into grid squares of equal size typically 1 inch to 2 inches on paper plan. The actual procedure involved in this is quite tedious and it will take almost 8 hours to complete a single sheet of plan with moderate complexity. Depending upon whether cut or fill is more the dirt is imported or removed from the site. The accuracy with this method is close to +/-20%.
Another method used to calculate cut and fill is called the cross-section method. In this method, instead of drawing grids as in the previous method, the estimator draws a set of horizontal lines which are equally placed across the site plan separated by 1 to 2 inches. This method generally involves more time than the grid method but gives an accuracy of about +/-15%… Just like the previous method here also depending upon whether cut or fill is more the dirt is imported or removed from the site.
The third and most effective method will be to use an estimating software estimating the cut and fill quantities required to grade the building site. In this method, using a computer the drawing of the site is analyzed closely to build both the existing and proposed surfaces. Then in order to determine the total cut or fill volumes for the building site for hundreds of thousands of points across the site, the software calculates the difference between the existing elevations and the proposed elevations. This method is comparatively faster and the time required to calculate cut and fill using estimating software is about only 2 hours and the accuracy with this method is about +/-5%.
The advantage of both the cross-section method and grid method is that they use commonly available resources which are relatively inexpensive and so the cost will be lesser. But the accuracy with these methods may suffer a bit.
The advantage of using estimating software to calculate cut and fill is their speed and better accuracy. But at the same time the cost associated with them can run from several thousand dollars to several tens of thousands of dollars. Also, to implement the estimator need to possess computer skills.
Which method is best for your company to calculate cut and fill depends upon how much excavation you need to perform per year. If you are having only a few excavations its better you go for the manual method. But, if you are an excavator who does a lot of cut and fill estimating, then its better you have the necessary hardware and estimating software so that your productivity can be increased.
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