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February 22, 2025

5 Tips on the Art and Science of Highway Cost Estimating

Silt fence, wattles, and a rock construction entrance protecting a graded heavy civil construction site after rain

How to Price Erosion Control and SWPPP Items on Civil Bids

Excavator being unloaded from a lowboy trailer at a highway construction staging area during mobilization

Mobilization Costs in Heavy Civil Bids: What to Include and How to Price It

Dump trucks loading crushed stone from a wheel loader at an aggregate quarry

Aggregate and Trucking Costs in Civil Estimates

Highway construction crew in hi-vis vests working on a federal-aid DOT project

Prevailing Wage on DOT Jobs: What Estimators Need to Know

Civil construction estimator reviewing roadway plans and estimating software on dual monitors

Construction Estimating Spreadsheet vs. Software: How to Decide

Highway bridge under construction with exposed rebar deck, precast girders, and a crawler crane

How to Estimate Bridge and Culvert Work

Heavy civil bridge construction project with crane setting a girder over a river

Bid Bonds and Bonding Capacity, Explained

What It's Like Getting Sued by Caterpillar | Dick Zheng, Bluelight Machines Co-Founder & CEO

Utility crew installing underground pipe in a shored trench with an excavator

How to Bid Utility and Sitework Projects

Civil estimator reviewing digital highway plans with earthwork jobsite visible outside

AI Construction Estimating Software: What It Can and Can't Do

Estimator reviewing DOT bid tabulation sheets at a desk with spreadsheets and highway plans

How to Read DOT Bid Tabs (and Turn Them Into Your Best Pricing Tool)

Bulldozer and motor grader performing grading and earthwork on a highway construction site

Grading and Earthwork Estimating Basics: How Not to Lose Money Moving Dirt

Estimating team reviewing DOT plans and electronic bids before a letting

DOT Bid Lettings Explained: How They Work and How to Win

Civil estimator's desk with bid documents, plans, and laptop

How Contractors Are Actually Using AI to Win More Bids in 2026

The $52 Million Note

Cold milling machine removing asphalt ahead of an overlay

Asphalt Overlay vs. Mill and Fill: Why the Estimates Are Nothing Alike

Loaded dump truck on a scale at an asphalt plant

How to Calculate Asphalt Tonnage (Without Getting Burned)

Asphalt paving crew laying hot-mix on a highway

How to Bid DOT Paving Projects: A Step-by-Step Guide for Contractors

Refuse to Lower Your Standards

Signed From a Hospital Bed

Unreasonable Hospitality + Wally

250 Years In 🇺🇸

The $13 Million Silt Fence

What The Best Bidders Get Right

Getting Paid On Time

One Owner, Many Checks

Where the Farmers Went

Estimate Real Costs, Bid Real Profit

From Scratch

Patrick Nelson and Tristan Wilson

The PIP

The Friday Night We Got Wrong

How To Run A Weekly Progress Meeting

Free Labor

Meaning to Call Isn't A System

Taste The Soup

Keep Them Guessing: How to Camoflage Your Bids

Become the Competitor Nobody Wants To Face

Building with Values - Barnhill's Skip Partington

Trust Is a Profit Strategy

Intelligent Bidding

How Often Do You Visit the Field?

Just Be A Good Human Who Pays Attention

What's In Your Control?

How I Got Six Weeks of My Life Back

Watch the Costs

Cost vs. Margin: The Discipline

Forget New Year's Resolutions. Do This Instead.

The Meeting We're Never Too Busy For (That Saves You Later)

The Day I Built an App in 20 Minutes

The Man Who Builds Billion-Dollar Companies in “Boring” Industries

The Card Pete Kiewit Carried in His Wallet

How Ames Won Hundreds of Millions By Moving Dirt Nobody Paid Them For

Tough Jobs Make Tough Contractors

Why Top Contractors Schedule Time to Do Nothing

🦺 Software Is Becoming Labor

Why Your Grandmother's Advice Still Beats the Latest Management Fad

My Roots

90 Minutes Back: How One Estimator Stopped Doing Data Entry

40 lessons from construction (at 40)

Plan the Work, Work the Plan

Why Paying On Time Is Your Secret Weapon

11 Habits That Separate Great Estimators From Everyone Else

Never Miss Another Deadline: Why We Built Our Spec Review Agent

The Secret I've Been Keeping: Robotics Are Here

Good Area Manager, Bad Area Manager

Civil Estimators, Meet Your New AI Superpower

We Built AI That Actually Understands Civil Estimating

Why Most Prime-Sub Relationships Fail (And How to Fix Them)

Estimating Ain't Bidding

Why Your Next Big Project Should Start With a Press Release

What's Possible vs What's In The Bid

The Art of the Takeoff

A Beginner's Guide to AI for Civil Contractors

Celebrating Your Most Important Asset

How Not To Hire

The Real Measure of Success: How Many People Have You Developed?

The Innovator’s Dilemma in Civil Construction: AI Will Reshape Everything

The Big Job Playbook

Cash Is King

Why Costco Is Stealing Your Next Superintendent

Why Horizontal Contractors Need a CRM

🧠 The Estimator of the Future Isn’t a Spreadsheet Wizard - It’s a Data Analyst with an AI Copilot

The Edge Podcast - Making Work Fun with Jay Winford

Losing a Bid at 0% Profit

What Field Crews Need to Know About Your Estimate

My First Bid as a Paving Estimator

If it ain’t broke, then break it

A Woman Who Paved The Way

Relentless Bidding

Bid Reviews That Don't Suck

The Most Heartfelt Compliment I Ever Received

Working for the Wrong Crowd

Decoding Construction Bidding: The Margin Conundrum

7 Things Every Estimator Should Know and a Bonus Challenge

Getting out of the office to see the work

5 Tips on the Art and Science of Highway Cost Estimating

The Call Every Construction Leader Dreads (And How to Handle It)

“You Either Win Or You Learn” - Jalen Hurts

Consistent Bid Preparation and Review

What it takes to win: Segment and target

See how pricing intelligence changes the way you compete