electrical estimating for engineers

[standaman]

What's the best source for us EE's to use to give the architect or owner an estimate? I don't have Means here at home office.

 

[tkb]

You could hire me. :grin:

 

[ron]

RS Means ....... or do what most other EE's do and provide a WAG.:roll:
I'm not a good guesstimater.

 

[sameguy]

We use a big wheel with numbers and then have a monkey throw darts at it; still come out too high 90+% of the time.
Had a GC tell me I read the spec. too much (Friday!)!

RS Means, NECA,

 

[tkb]

We use a big wheel with numbers and then have a monkey throw darts at it; still come out too high 90+% of the time.
Had a GC tell me I read the spec. too much (Friday!)!

RS Means, NECA,

No such thing as reading the spec too much.
They will hang you with it after you get the job.
Even when you make spec exclusions in your proposal, they will expect you to sign their contract that holds you to the spec and all of the drawings even though they only gave you the electrical drawings.

 

[petersonra]

I call the EC and ask them. And then tell the customer it is a guess.

There is just no way to know what any particular job is going to cost in my world.

Sometimes the setup, teardown, and admin time involved in smaller jobs exceeds the actual labor hours.

 

[roger]

RS Means ....... or do what most other EE's do and provide a WAG.:roll:

Both of those are the same thing.

Roger

 

[cdslotz]

RS Means might be a good choice because it does have sq/ft pricing based on the type of facility (hospital, schools, churches, warehouse, etc). The sq/ft data is all I've ever used in Means. The unit pricing is way too complicated for me. Plus trying to understand all of the regional labor rates makes my head explode.
Most of the architects around here put out schematic or DD drawings to GC's that are likely to be bidding the jobs under design, and the GC's in turn send them to us EC's for budgeting. We have good history of all types of jobs we can pull from for budgeting.
I understand sometimes EE's and Architects may want to keep all of this in-house, so RS Means might be your best source.