Time Lost To Estimating
- Thread starter Speshulk
- Start date
- Status
John120/240
Senior Member
- Location
- Olathe, Kansas
Lost time should be built into your overhead IMO. Just like truck maintenance it is not chargeable to any specific job that is
what overhead is.
what overhead is.
hardworkingstiff
Senior Member
- Location
- Wilmington, NC
IMO, all estimating time is overhead, whether you get the job or not. It's part of the business that is not revenue generating.
brian john
Senior Member
- Location
- Kilmarnock, Va
- Occupation
- Retired after 52 years in the trade.
And if I do not get the job I do not give it much thought after I find out I lost the bid, I move on.
- Location
- Simi Valley, CA
Someone on here once said that you could bill for all of your hours and I told them that was impossible. Not gloating, just saying.
brian john
Senior Member
- Location
- Kilmarnock, Va
- Occupation
- Retired after 52 years in the trade.
But I cover as many of them as I can.
- Location
- Simi Valley, CA
That you can do.
ptonsparky
Tom
- Occupation
- EC - retired
I have a customer in town that has asked me to give a price on 5 different buildings in the last 30 years...each were a no go and I am really finding it hard to work up a price on the 6th.
hardworkingstiff
Senior Member
- Location
- Wilmington, NC
I can understand that. Did the customer ever give you feedback on the other bidders pricing? If not, I don't know if I would waste my time on it.
It's easy to keep a record of time spent on "looking at" or quoting "possible" jobs. Many of the customers that ask for prices or ask you to take a look at something are also customers you do work for on a regular basis. When you know you have a job for them (service call, after hr's. emergency work, T+M etc ) add some of your lost time into the invoice.It's not difficult to add $50 bucks here or there and over time it seems that a lot of your "wasted hr's are covered. JMO
ptonsparky
Tom
- Occupation
- EC - retired
No one else bid on the projects, he just did not do them.
hardworkingstiff
Senior Member
- Location
- Wilmington, NC
That makes it a little harder to just walk away.
Simplify
Member
- Location
- Burlington, CT, United States
Be honest with them
Be honest with them
Having Quoted a lot of customers and literally thousands of quotes over the last many years I would say to the Client that your a bit skeptical why you never received any of the last 5 Bids. If it seems like they can't give you a strait answer or if they are to brash then maybe it isn't worth wasting your time especially if your pretty certain your not going to win it. Because from the description it sounds like this one is just using you to drive the other guy down who he eventually will give the work to regardless.
Be honest with them
Having Quoted a lot of customers and literally thousands of quotes over the last many years I would say to the Client that your a bit skeptical why you never received any of the last 5 Bids. If it seems like they can't give you a strait answer or if they are to brash then maybe it isn't worth wasting your time especially if your pretty certain your not going to win it. Because from the description it sounds like this one is just using you to drive the other guy down who he eventually will give the work to regardless.
Agreed. I just put a admin employee in place to crunch the numbers for me (among other tasks). He's 70, was in the trade for a long time, his knowledge is invaluable, wasn't looking for a career or big paycheck. He wanted to stay busy keep his mind sharp. The workforce is getting older, and there is a large underused pool of 65+ folks that can fit well in a small business. Having an elder's knowledge is great, I'm under 40. It saves me time and am not shooting from the hip on smaller jobs. Recouping that cost is coming back in more accurate estimating and free time is priceless.
MikeS
Member
- Location
- Chapel Hill NC
Separating the wheat from the chaff
Separating the wheat from the chaff
I've been struggling with the time "lost" estimating too. All of my work is residential remodel and folks always want a quote before beginning anything. It's a necessary evil. The best I can do before hand is to try to separate the tire kickers from the genuinely interested. I try to throw out a ballpark range before I look at the job "other similar jobs in a house as old as yours have come in around...." and then I'll detail a few things that may influence final cost. Within a 15 minute phone call I'll either weed them out or set up a real estimate or sometimes just schedule the job.
As others have said, the rest is overhead and you account for it as best you can in billing.
Separating the wheat from the chaff
I've been struggling with the time "lost" estimating too. All of my work is residential remodel and folks always want a quote before beginning anything. It's a necessary evil. The best I can do before hand is to try to separate the tire kickers from the genuinely interested. I try to throw out a ballpark range before I look at the job "other similar jobs in a house as old as yours have come in around...." and then I'll detail a few things that may influence final cost. Within a 15 minute phone call I'll either weed them out or set up a real estimate or sometimes just schedule the job.
As others have said, the rest is overhead and you account for it as best you can in billing.
I would not bother,He is just using your prices to beat someone else down.
emfforhire
Member
- Location
- New Orleans, La., USA
Lost time
Lost time
My advice is not to bid job number six for that contractor. You are being used as a pricing service. We rarely give estimates now and work mainly at hourly rates and a fixed mark up on materials. We always beat our bids when we do bid but you can't loose on T&M (unless there is a payment risk). After we start jobs and people see how effective and quick we are they usually add more work. I have thrown storage box after box away of bid files. The bid process does make for a efficient market but better to make your own (market) if you can get away with it. I now work four days a week instead of five. Bid smart - don't bid on low percentage jobs such as the out of town contractors calling you up long distance to bid a job ten other general contractors are bidding on at the local mall. Good luck.
Lost time
My advice is not to bid job number six for that contractor. You are being used as a pricing service. We rarely give estimates now and work mainly at hourly rates and a fixed mark up on materials. We always beat our bids when we do bid but you can't loose on T&M (unless there is a payment risk). After we start jobs and people see how effective and quick we are they usually add more work. I have thrown storage box after box away of bid files. The bid process does make for a efficient market but better to make your own (market) if you can get away with it. I now work four days a week instead of five. Bid smart - don't bid on low percentage jobs such as the out of town contractors calling you up long distance to bid a job ten other general contractors are bidding on at the local mall. Good luck.
jmellc
Senior Member
- Location
- Durham, NC
- Occupation
- Facility Maintenance Tech. Licensed Electrician
Right on. If I could bill for my estimating hours, I would have no troubles at all. I am sure some EC's in more profitable markets can recover some of that but most of us doing small scale stuff can't get much recovery. Small profit margin to begin with.
jmellc
Senior Member
- Location
- Durham, NC
- Occupation
- Facility Maintenance Tech. Licensed Electrician
Is he a customer or a prospect? I had a guy I did 1 small job for when I worked for someone else. I priced him a couple of other jobs for the employer, then later priced 2 jobs for him when I was on my own. All the quotes were too high for him. He was also a guy demanding I take my shoes off. I would take at least an hour looking things over, 1/2 hour answering his endless questions, 1/4 hour listening to him pitch his own business (photography) to me. I would get back to him next day with a quote and answer more questions about why so high, then him try to sell me family photographs, etc. Last time he called, I told him I was busy. I would not mind so bad if I were getting any paying business from him.
If this guy has never paid you for any work, he is not a customer. He is a tire kicker. For some reason, he likes having your bids as references but he always gets a cheaper one. In fact, it could be a game for him to award bids to his BIL or some other favored party. He gets a couple of bids, then tells BIL to bid $100 cheaper.
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