2018 DAY 2: Estimating, Surveying, and Layout

After completing their first day of safety and set-up, campers were prepared to start their go-kart racing pad projects in earnest.

An important step that must be taken before any construction project can begin is estimating the project cost and sending in a “bid” for said project, and this is right where our second day of camp began.

Blank excel spreadsheet that campers filled out to calculate the estimated price of their go-kart pad projects.

Mark McKenzie, President of Ranger Excavating, and Nathan Ziehr, Vice President of Ranger Excavating, both arrived early in the morning to introduce campers to the business side of construction.

In order to get the contract for a construction project, a construction company must submit a sealed bid containing the total amount of money they will need to do the project. To get this number, as McKenzie and Ziehr explained to the campers, you have to factor in transportation, material costs, profit margins, and even what number other companies might be submitting.

Camper looking through the eye-piece of a surveying tripod to measure the elevation for his team’s pad.

Profit margins and competition aside, the teams of campers were now tasked with coming up with as accurate of a bid as they could for the actual projects that they were doing that week. Through the assistance of cost sheets, maps, and this handy excel sheet to the right, campers were able to work towards a final cost estimation, competing against other teams to see who would “win the contract”.

After lunch, instructors gave a brief recap on elevation lines, and started discussing with campers why they’re important for a construction project. To get a better understanding of why, campers headed outside to physically lay out their go-kart pads with assistance from RangerACE Pros Kenneth Popham and Daniel Hernandez of Ranger Excavating.

Campers were given a hands-on introduction to the world of surveying as they used surveying tripods and prism poles to lay out stakes with instructions on how to level the area their pad would be made on. Both RangerACE Pros assisted them in using surveying tools, and also walked campers through the math surveyors use on a daily basis. Overall, the campers were able to prepare their pad areas for the next day as well as learn about an extremely fun and interesting field of construction.