Unfortunately, when it comes to job cost accounting it is "garbage in, garbage out". Field people naturally want to embellish their productivity. Accounting people don't have enough field experience to know if the field people are being honest or not. It's like the Emperor's New Clothes. Everybody is fearful of telling the owner what is really going on so it usually becomes a rude awakening at the end of the year.

Yes and no. A new estimator can't really hurt himself too much on the canned packages. A substantial portion of the software company's revenues are from selling the training seminars/classes so they try to put the hard sell on you.

Ah, so that's why DOE jobs go for so much $$.......

Yes it is. It has a lot of flexibility which is why I like it. It also allows you to do "what if" scenarios where you can change different values without having to redo the whole spread sheet like in Excel.

I am currently using an Excell based estimating workbook. It is nice because I have it running on a Blackberry. I can put together an estimate right on the spot. The Blackberry also has a camera so I can take pictures with it also.
I alos have it running on a Toughbook which is a nice computer because it is shock and dust resistant as well as waterproof.
Excell gives you a lot of flexibility. All of the "canned" estimating software is set up for construction and trying to get it to work for demolition is trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole.
I just finished a consulting contract and the client used a program called Bid2Win. It is pretty nice and it has a module called a data warehouse which stores your historical costs and allows you to arrange it in any manner in which you see fit either by type of structure, city, whatever. I like it so much that I am attending a seminar in December on it.
Then again there always is the good ol' dartboard for bidding