From manual tedium to automated efficiency: How a simple ZIP extraction script transformed my electrical contracting workflow

The Problem: Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts

As an electrical contractor, I bid on 15-20 projects every week through online construction platforms. Each project arrives as a ZIP file containing blueprints, specifications, and project documents.

Sounds straightforward, right? Wrong.

My Old Workflow (The Time Vampire)

1. Download ZIP file from bidding platform
2. Navigate to Downloads folder
3. Double-click to extract ZIP
4. Create a project folder with proper naming convention
5. Move extracted files into organized folder
6. Upload files to estimating software (Accubid)

Time per project: 3 minutes

Three minutes doesn't sound like much. But multiply that by 17 projects per week...

The Math That Made Me Act

The brutal reality of small inefficiencies:

• 3 minutes per project

• 17 projects per week (average)