When our local chapter of ASPE held a bid simulation for the college students we made the decision to have them not use computers. Some of my fellow ASPE members were saying that we needed to allow the use of computers. Their reasoning was that it is what they will be using when they are bidding projects in the real world. The others side maintained the point of if you know how to do it by hand then making the transition to computer will be easy. Also compiling a bid by hand leaves room for errors in your calculations and opportunities to learn from them.
One of the teams did make a calculation mistake while applying a percentage. If they had not made that mistake then they would have won the event. I bet they will not make that mistake again! However, if they had used a computer they probably would have not made the mistake, and therefore not learned from that mistake.
All seasoned estimators have stories of the mistakes they have made and learned from. Why not have the newer estimators make those mistakes when nothing but pride is on the line.
