Benchmark Estimating Software – Ceiling and Floor Calculator Functions

Version 7.2 and later of Benchmark Estimating Software now support CEILING and FLOOR functions within the Quantity Calculator. These allow you to round up and round down (respectively) to the nearest whole number or multiple of, for example, 5, 10, 100, 1000 etc.

Some simple examples of the CEILING function logic are:

CEILING(1023,10)=1030

or

CEILING(1023.1,1)=1024

These functions are useful in many estimating scenarios, especially when using Materials that come in set units e.g. 10kg bags of cement or 25L tins of paint, and you always want to round up to the nearest whole number. When used together with the other functions in our Calculator, CEILING and FLOOR provide powerful tools that will save estimators time and ensure your estimates are more accurate.

An example of how it can be used in a real life situation is if you have an Item in your estimate to “Paint a Wall” and this Item is in Square Metres. If one 25L Paint Tin covers 100 Square Metres, the PAINT TIN Resource could have a calculation:

CEILING(iq()/100,1)

In the case where the Square Metres of Wall equals 260, this calculation would equate to

CEILING(260/100,1) which would equal 3 PAINT TINS

The FLOOR function works the same as CEILING but it rounds down. For example:

FLOOR(1020,100)=1000