In my experience nothing beats the human brain! I have used several estimating programs and the "trick" is to know how to perform the analysis by manual methods so you can check the programs. Different programs use different assumptions for their standard model and you need to find out...
I was asked today, by another contractor on my site, where the term "rip rap" came from. I was stumped! I have never considered the origin of the term. Does anyone out there have any information on the history of "rip rap"?
