Just now getting back to this - apologies for not having time to be as attentive to this thread as I'd originally planned to be. It wasn't and isn't a lack of appreciation. You that are self-employed know the feast/famine side of things and I've been trying to be four places at the same time for a couple of weeks now.
As I am rereading this I realize that I missed some rather critical information. It wasn't important at the time because a couple of change orders eliminated some equipment like the 300HP chipper, and mentioning it was more an expression of the frustration that comes from bidding a job several times. That said, I'm going to back up a bit and, having read all of the input, try and construct the scope of this from the get-go.
I met the gentleman that owns this bark and soil plant (Tim) through a general contractor who regularly does his work. The GC had called me in for a total house renovation which, unbeknownst to me at the time, belonged to Tim and was to be a gift to his nephew - yeah, I know, must be nice to have the kind of money that spends $80,000 on a home remodel for an extended family member. Tim, the owner of the plant that is the subject of this thread, was impressed by my work and the detail I had provided in my original bid: my company (I personally) take(s) an inordinate amount of time when planning even small jobs to provide customers with what they need and want even when they don't know what that is. He noted that I struck him as highly professional and detail orientated, that our site was clean and organized, that our proposed additions made sense and would have been a change order after occupancy and that his previous contractors had made a habit of only doing the minimum and then charging him out the butt to add things they should have known would have been needed later.
At that time, I had no idea who Tim was. To me, he was just a gentleman that had stopped by the site out of curiosity to have a look around; I silently speculated that he was probably a friend of the home's owner or something. It wasn't until the end of our half-hour conversation that he properly introduced himself as the man writing the checks and asked me if I would be interested in bidding another job for him - this plant.
Our initial look at the plant didn't yield much. He told me that what he wanted in lighting and convenience receptacles, showed me the break room and mezzanine areas (that weren't yet built), where the supplier was mounting their xfmr bank and such. I was told at that time that he wanted a bid only for Phase I: a 600A main service, a 200A secondary, the lights and receps and a couple of 1/3HP exhaust fans. That was it. And that is what I bid on and won. There were three other bids, and from Tim's language I inferred that accepting those were a matter of propriety over any real consideration. None put together a complete proposal as I did, none broke down the material and labor estimates, none asked about Phase II, and all of them had a one-page Word version of an estimate compared to my 13-page contract.
Since then there have been numerous changes. I poked and prodded him and finally convinced him that I would not be able to adequately size any potential future needs if I didn't know what Phase II was going to encompass. That's when I learned about that 300HP chipper, finally got the phone number for the POC at the utility side of things and was put in contact with the equipment manufacturer for the production line equipment (who were everything but helpful).
That chipper changed everything, but not on the service side of things where the building was concerned. It was to be located about 150' from the plant itself, out by the utility xfmr bank. I changed my primaries so I would have the underground part done and we could just pull a dedicated set of 500's to a 400A disconnect on an H-frame straight from the utility's CTs; the building would be fed from another 600A disconnect on that H-frame to the MDP mounted inside. I bid it again. Then he eliminated the chipper completely. Then he decided against moving the utility poles because it was going to cost $28,000 to do so.
See where things get a bit difficult to adequately convey on a computer screen? Since my original bid, there have been six changes to the primaries. Complicating things from there was finding out that he didn't even need 3-phase service on the secondaries, much less 200 available amps at 208. Not a big change, but it did change my layout, wire colors, etc. Back to the supply house, bid it again please, sorry about all of this...
Things finalized the other day, thank God. While the line equipment manufacturer still hasn't provided me any cut sheets, I at least know the drops: two 60A discos and a single 30A disco per line, one line being installed now and POSSIBLY a second line later (on down the line, if you will). Those come off the 480 service along with the lights (10 wall packs and 12 F-5 hi-bays). That's it on the primary.
Instead of CTs, we are now hitting a 400A meter to feed a 400A, 480V 3-phase MDP. I'm going to provide a single phase (indoor, dry-type) 50KvA xfmr feeding a 150A MBO single phase can.
[Was kind of funny: I had included a slip meter riser in my request for material bid sheets and one supplier called me and asked me what that was. Needless to say, I won't be using them for anything other than a bag of wing nuts...]
I have to draw a line somewhere: the amount of man hours I have bidding this is ridiculous. I can't, and should not be expected to, keep up with every change he thinks sounds good only to revert to previous configurations later. I try, guys, I really do. I put an enormous amount of effort into making absolutely certain that any job I build has little need for major upgrades for the life of the service. But there comes a time when I have to say that enough is enough and that my very best has to be a settling point. I'm at that point.
My little itty bitty company is growing and I'm exited to be extended the trust to design and build my first commercial project (back in Phoenix I was a commercial foreman for 10 years and ran crews up to 27 men, but on my own where there isn't any estimator, project manager, senior foreman and investor is a whole different, and scary, ball of wax). I'm trying to give my best while protecting myself - Tim is a nice guy and a Christian gentleman, but business is business and I have a bottom line to account for and profitability ratios to hold to. My time is worth something, and I feel that I have gone way, way out of my way to accommodate this job.
I'm an old-school sparky. I applied for my first electrical job straight out of the Infantry in 1993 and was handed a shovel and told to dig. I did. I spent a summer in the Phoenix summer digging - the foreman of that company told me that he didn't care who anyone was, everyone digs, even the foreman if needed. Heck, I like to dig. I still dig. Crank the radio, fill the water bottle and sleep great when the day is done. My helper is only now getting that I enjoy the manual work and I'm not there trying to make up for an inadequacy of his work.
I was never offered school and never went - back then, in Phoenix anyway, only union guys went to school. They didn't dig, so they didn't get a job and sat on the books instead (that isn't meant as any slight to any union sparky - how I wish I had gone to school!). Not my cup of tea. And school would have interfered with my drinking career. Couldn't have anything getting in the way of my nightly drunk. I bought a code book and studied it every night. When I began bending pipe, I would take home sticks to practice bending on. I took home copies of the prints and studied those. I would show up a half-hour before work and follow the foreman around while he unlocked things and set out the water jugs and bug him with the dumbest questions... but that is how I learned.
I ran my first job after three years in the trade and never stopped from there. I didn't, and for the most part still don't, have a clue about what makes an xfmr work. The only theory I know is what I have picked up in personal inquisitiveness. I never even knew that "real" electricians carried apprentice and JW cards - I honestly thought that was a union only thing.
Not having any school behind me makes things super tough on jobs like this. For every hour I spend tools on in this job I'll have five or six hours of research. So I am extremely thorough when I bid a job. I've made friends with some of my competition in the area (it's a small area where people are generally friendly and there is plenty of work to go around) and I bounce questions and ideas off of them and check their input against other sources.
I'm 43 now and, hindsight being what it is... well, I don't regret the past - it made me who I am today. Still, I would like to have the education side of things and have been seriously considering online courses like a JATC program. Many of you are going to have something negative to say--guy with no school doing work on his own? Preposterous!--but this trade and the pointy end of an issued rifle going thataway is all I have done my life and I need to make a living. Not much call for shooting things as a civilian, and I sure can't afford to take a $10/hr job just so I can go to school. Somehow I doubt I am the only guy here that learned the way I did.
I want to extend my most sincere appreciation for those that have opined. I know time is valuable and that you took some of yours to benefit some of mine. Thanks. Hopefully I will be able to pay the favor forward and help someone else that has some seemingly ridiculous set of questions.
I always take before, during and after pictures of any installation and I'll be sure to post some of them here for anyone interested. Thank you again.