Estimator

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kelley

Member
Location
Massachusetts
Occupation
Estimator
We will be looking to hire a full time estimator within the next year. We are a small shop, 6 men at this time but looking to grow. Commercial Industrial and residential work.

At this point my self and the boss do the estimating.

We would like the new estimator to have field experience as i think most would.

We are unsure as to what the pay range would be. Obviously experience would factor in but I would like to have some opinions and advice from this group.

Thanks in advance.

Kelley
 

macmikeman

Senior Member
Hire a kid who just graduated with an EE degree from the local or state college. I hate to say this but they are the kids with the brains. And no jobs these days. Pay him dirt at first, and if he or she is good soon you will be paying more out of realizing this is one of the best moves you have ever made.
 

69gp

Senior Member
Location
MA
We will be looking to hire a full time estimator within the next year. We are a small shop, 6 men at this time but looking to grow. Commercial Industrial and residential work.

At this point my self and the boss do the estimating.

We would like the new estimator to have field experience as i think most would.

We are unsure as to what the pay range would be. Obviously experience would factor in but I would like to have some opinions and advice from this group.

Thanks in advance.

Kelley

At a 6 man shop is going to be hard to pay for a full time estimator at this point. And yes you need someone who has experience in the field and can find the loopholes to help make you money and get the job done. Hiring someone just out of school may be alright for a large shop that has several estimators that the trainee can learn from but would you trust some young kid with a 2 million dollar job that you hold the bond for?? As you know when you bid a job its how can I have a lower price than anyone else. Can you get all your feeders in PVC in the ground as opposed to running EMT overhead. Items like this can save you thousands and get you the job.

If I were you I would look for someone who would work part time. Structure the fee off of the price of the job. Usually a percentage of the cost with smaller jobs paying more of a percentage and working up to the larger projects where the fee would drop down as the price goes up. A good estimator can bid multiple jobs at once and be able to bid multi million dollar jobs in a day or two. By hiring a per job estimator when work is slow you can still do the estimating without letting anyone go as there is no hard feelings. To see how good or close the estimator is to your company operations you could give a potential estimator a set of prints for a project you won already and see what his numbers would be on it. The main number I would be interested in is how the labor hours match up. By doing a flat rate fee you can 1099 the estimator and save on all the taxes and insurance.

just my 2 cents
 

Cletis

Senior Member
Location
OH
i'm in same boat. I need one bad right now. I'm thinking min wage plus a % of Gross Profit of each job he lands. This will push sales tactics, follow ups, and streamlining the effiency of job. If you just give a bonus on gross revenue he might just bid everything low just to keep landing stuff all the time v.s. getting 3/10 jobs.

Ex. Service Upgrade

Low
$1,500.00 Lands 10/10 $ 15,000.00 10% = $ 1,500.00 Bonus Company Net Profit $300 ish per upgrade so $ 3,000.00 Company

High

$ 2,200.00 3/10 $ 6,600.00 10% = $ 660 Bonus Company Net Profit $1,000 ish per upgrade x 3 = $ 3,000.00

What do you expect him to bid like then
 

69gp

Senior Member
Location
MA
i'm in same boat. I need one bad right now. I'm thinking min wage plus a % of Gross Profit of each job he lands. This will push sales tactics, follow ups, and streamlining the effiency of job. If you just give a bonus on gross revenue he might just bid everything low just to keep landing stuff all the time v.s. getting 3/10 jobs.

Ex. Service Upgrade

Low
$1,500.00 Lands 10/10 $ 15,000.00 10% = $ 1,500.00 Bonus Company Net Profit $300 ish per upgrade so $ 3,000.00 Company

High

$ 2,200.00 3/10 $ 6,600.00 10% = $ 660 Bonus Company Net Profit $1,000 ish per upgrade x 3 = $ 3,000.00

What do you expect him to bid like then

it takes a lot to trust someone with your bidding and if they hit every bid I would be very concerned that there is a problem.

I have a friend who owned a fencing company (not with swords) and ran several crews. He hired a new salesman and he was getting 100's of thousands dollars worth of work. Jobs were backed up for 4 or 5 months and by the time they were getting to this salesman's work he quit. Come to find out yes he was getting a commission on every job he sold. But if the job required say 200 linear feet of fence he would only price it at say 150' list it on the paperwork as the full 200' and make the sale. My friend did honor all the work that was sold and took the loss. Time did take its toll on him with all the stress and sad to say he did pass away at 50 years of age.
 

Strathead

Senior Member
Location
Ocala, Florida, USA
Occupation
Electrician/Estimator/Project Manager/Superintendent
I am an estimator, I am told a fairly good one. I also Project Manage. That said, Definitely a small shop like yours can't afford a full time estimator. You would be far better suited to hire another project manager and share the estimating, or share the project managing if the guy is best at estimating.

Second, no way should you consider hiring a kid out of college. That is not an estimator that is a take off person.

Third, your jobs are only as good as your estimates period!

Fourth, I wouldn't work on cost plus basis based on profit period. My preference would be salary, but since there are bad estimators and it can be hard to filter, one other way, may be acceptable. You set the wage rate for estimating, and you determine minimum overhead and profit, period. Then you bonus the estimator on labor dollars, material cost and expenses. Say, must be less than 5% over on labor dollars, and 3% over on material, etc. Definitely labor dollars not hours. Anything tied in to profit is way too easy to manipulate. Frankly, I wouldn't trust my brother to tell me how much he actually made.
 

cusaba

Member
Location
United States
Multi Million Dollar in a couple of days?!

Multi Million Dollar in a couple of days?!

Dis someone say "multi million" dollar project estimated in a day or two?
I want to hire that guy!!!!! or maybe I want him far away from me... :cool:

How much do you have on sales? 6 guys is small, your boss and you can run that show and hire "someone" you can teach. It will save you money and he will learn your means and methods of doing things. Treat him well. As you might know already; your estimator can make your day or ruin your life....
 

69gp

Senior Member
Location
MA
Dis someone say "multi million" dollar project estimated in a day or two?
I want to hire that guy!!!!! or maybe I want him far away from me... :cool:


When your good at what you do it's easy.

You would not want a butcher to do a heart transplant but you would not mind having a heart surgeon cut your steak at the meat market.
 

cusaba

Member
Location
United States
When your good at what you do it's easy.

You would not want a butcher to do a heart transplant but you would not mind having a heart surgeon cut your steak at the meat market.


I'll love to see it with my own eyes. A multi million dollar project is not a two day job. Browsing all pages, at that level takes time, reading specs, doing a take-off of lighting, gear, wiring devices, fire alarm, access, security and whatever else you might have there takes time, wheeling all that out analog or electronic and transferring to whatever software or cardboard you use..... not to mention rfi's and crap...... :happysad:
 

69gp

Senior Member
Location
MA
I'll love to see it with my own eyes. A multi million dollar project is not a two day job. Browsing all pages, at that level takes time, reading specs, doing a take-off of lighting, gear, wiring devices, fire alarm, access, security and whatever else you might have there takes time, wheeling all that out analog or electronic and transferring to whatever software or cardboard you use..... not to mention rfi's and crap...... :happysad:


Been there done that. It's pretty easy when you do it for a living. First of all a multi-million dollar job is not that big in today's world. Not all electrical jobs have all the systems you talked about. But to back it up you need to know people in the trade. You need to deal direct with the lighting rep, the gear manufacturer, generator manufacturer and the same for the fire alarms and other LV systems. If the job is out there they already have the specifications. If you know who the EE is on the job you know there specs. 90% of bid is an assembly.

If its a super quick turnaround any good estimator can pretty much guess the cost of all the equipment being used without getting a quote. The hard part to estimate is the lighting package.

I taught my son to do estimates when he was 8 years old. I would give him jobs that I previously bid and have him do the take offs. I call it trial by fire. After several good counts I gave him a small $300,000.00 dollar job to bid. Of course I did go over everything and put the final number on it. He did point out a small discrepancy on the feeders to all the panels. The system was 480 volt 3 phase 4 wire but on the feeder schedule the listed only 1 wire per conduit. Got the job and a nice change order.
 

cusaba

Member
Location
United States
Been there done that. It's pretty easy when you do it for a living. First of all a multi-million dollar job is not that big in today's world. Not all electrical jobs have all the systems you talked about. But to back it up you need to know people in the trade. You need to deal direct with the lighting rep, the gear manufacturer, generator manufacturer and the same for the fire alarms and other LV systems. If the job is out there they already have the specifications. If you know who the EE is on the job you know there specs. 90% of bid is an assembly.

If its a super quick turnaround any good estimator can pretty much guess the cost of all the equipment being used without getting a quote. The hard part to estimate is the lighting package.

I taught my son to do estimates when he was 8 years old. I would give him jobs that I previously bid and have him do the take offs. I call it trial by fire. After several good counts I gave him a small $300,000.00 dollar job to bid. Of course I did go over everything and put the final number on it. He did point out a small discrepancy on the feeders to all the panels. The system was 480 volt 3 phase 4 wire but on the feeder schedule the listed only 1 wire per conduit. Got the job and a nice change order.


I see.
 

Strathead

Senior Member
Location
Ocala, Florida, USA
Occupation
Electrician/Estimator/Project Manager/Superintendent

For support, I agree with you cusaba. There may be a multi-million dollar job I could bid in a couple of days (one day? not without pharmaceuticals!), but it would be an entity I was extremely familiar with, a Contractor I really trusted and a bid that had a fairly substantial fudge factor. That kind of estimate is not what my boss pays me to do.
 

cdslotz

Senior Member
When your good at what you do it's easy.

You would not want a butcher to do a heart transplant but you would not mind having a heart surgeon cut your steak at the meat market.

Haha....that's funny.

I don't care how "good" you are.....a multi-million dollar job cannot be done in two days.

More like two weeks, and probably multiple estimators
 

cusaba

Member
Location
United States
For support, I agree with you cusaba. There may be a multi-million dollar job I could bid in a couple of days (one day? not without pharmaceuticals!), but it would be an entity I was extremely familiar with, a Contractor I really trusted and a bid that had a fairly substantial fudge factor. That kind of estimate is not what my boss pays me to do.

I was packing and ready to jump out of the boat. I felt so miserable and incapable..... :D You just brought my confidence back,,,,, :p
 

cusaba

Member
Location
United States
Haha....that's funny.

I don't care how "good" you are.....a multi-million dollar job cannot be done in two days.

More like two weeks, and probably multiple estimators

don't you see we are a disgrace to the trade? :lol: if you can't do a multi million dollar estimate in two days you are lost and you don't know what you do and you are just bad! :D
From now on my goal is to do a Multi million dollar job in one day, maybe half a day.... the rest of the day will be used to do the job with one screw driver and a pair of pliers.... :cool:
 

cdslotz

Senior Member
don't you see we are a disgrace to the trade? :lol: if you can't do a multi million dollar estimate in two days you are lost and you don't know what you do and you are just bad! :D
From now on my goal is to do a Multi million dollar job in one day, maybe half a day.... the rest of the day will be used to do the job with one screw driver and a pair of pliers.... :cool:

So are you flat rate or square footing?

Hahaha!!!!
 

gadfly56

Senior Member
Location
New Jersey
Occupation
Professional Engineer, Fire & Life Safety
Me? nah, that's too much trouble...... I go by the weight of the drawings.......:thumbsup:

Heck no, it's square footage and scale!! It makes a difference ya know. You can pack a lot more on a 36x48 drawing than a 24x36.:happyyes:
 

69gp

Senior Member
Location
MA
That's ok if you guys can't bid big jobs in a couple of days right now. When you get better you can come play with the big boys and we will show you how its done. (just Kidding). I have a lot of experience in the field and on the computer putting my bids together. I am not saying I hit all the big jobs I bid but I have a few select contractors that I quote to all the time and I never want to say no to them. You can throw your comments out there about how it can't be done and it would take 2 weeks and what about this and that but when you get down to the nitty gritty it always gets done. If you have the mindset of it can't be done than for you it will never get done. When you know it can get done you will get it done. I am not sure what kind of work you guys do or size of the projects. I do a lot of custom work that other contractors probably do not want to do or do not even know how to do it along with regular electrical projects. I have never said no to any electrical bid no matter what the scope involved.
 
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