Electrical Estimator

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commelect192

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Location
Texas
Occupation
Estimator
I am an electrical estimator. I have been working for the same company for 13 years. I started with almost no electrical experience, and have gotten better and better over the years. I have no experience outside of my work environment to judge how well I am doing as an estimator, so I am genuinely curious how much volume, dollar wise, an estimator with my experience should be estimating each month. As well as how much contract value I should be winning each year. I keep meticulous records on what I bid so I have data on what bid/win each year, but just curious what is normal. The company I work for employs about 45 guys in the field, I am the sole estimator, and currently have no assistant, though one is on the way. We are a strictly commercial electrical contractor, winning projects in the $20K to $5MM range.
 
Yes, I keep very good records, and review bids against actual cost once complete. I would consider myself very accurate. I have won thousands of projects, over the last 13 years, only 3-4 projects lost money, another 10 or so have come close to breaking even. The remainder have been very profitable. I by no means win every bid I submit. I have grown comfortable with my process, and put the best number I can on a project with a profit margin I am comfortable with. I guess my main reason for my question is I am trying to justify hiring an assistant. Last year I bid $64MM worth of work, and won about $11MM, with no help. Profit-wise we had the best year ever. This year looks like I will be bidding even more, and winning more. I am just curious what other commercial electrical contractors are getting out of their estimators, and how much I can expect to increase my output hiring an assistant.
 
If you move to NY I'll hire you! If your firm is making fair or better profits for the area I'd say your clearly doing well. Just make sure you're comfortable with the hours you're working. You probably shouldn't be working 60 hours nor should you be working 20 hours a week. You also have to consider the time away from your bidding that it's going to take if you truly want to teach another person your system. What's the worst case scenario? Your assistant has an extra hour here or there in which they probably can help with other office tasks. Have realistic expectations, they don't have to increase business by 50%, they need to cover the cost of their salary plus your overhead and profit.

Just My Opinion - I think there's many differences between how shops are ran after that bid is won. So it's not just You, but You doing your part on a good team. Your numbers and sales started the process then everyone else has to do their best to keep it rolling. Shop supers have to allocate manpower correctly, material getting to guys when they need, etc... It's all gotta flow.
 
commelect192 said:
I am just curious what other commercial electrical contractors are getting out of their estimators, and how much I can expect to increase my output hiring an assistant.
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If you hire somebody as talented as yourself who can work independently and s/he can quick learn your procedures and accurately apply them, you just might attain the magical doubling of output (200%) with two people. The odds are against it though. Usually having an assistant means you'll get 150% as much work accomplished between the two of you. If you can do better than that, you are being very successful.
 
OP, I’m in a similar position that you are in and would be intereted in sharing experiences. Like youself I have many questions when we get pidgin holed and few resources to bounce them off of. Peer group if you will. Thankful for this website and its participants.

Our revenue output to award ratio is similar but, like LLSolution implies, it involves working an unreasonable amount of hours so I recently brought in that helper you mentioned. I have a feeling you’re putting in the time too. Honestly don’t see it paying real dividends till 1 to 1.5 years elapse as they’re on the lower end of the qualification tier (not an EJ), but I’ll be clear: it was a great decision! Sure you’re not going to double that output, but it will In a 1:1 ratio reduce the loads you choose to shed, at first administrative and segueing to technical, once you make the investment.
 
LLSolutions said:
Just My Opinion - I think there's many differences between how shops are ran after that bid is won. So it's not just You, but You doing your part on a good team. Your numbers and sales started the process then everyone else has to do their best to keep it rolling. Shop supers have to allocate manpower correctly, material getting to guys when they need, etc... It's all gotta flow.
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And it is an excellent opinion!

To the OP, read this statement above again and think about it a minute.
If your bidding your jobs at 30% profit and making 10%, it could be either missing some things on a bid, or the installers spending too much time on the job doing something else but installing.

Conversely, I have a real good friend that owns a cabling company. He had an estimator for a little while that would miss numbers, but he had a team of guys that could about make money with any number given them. (And it was done right!) He got rid of that estimator after about a year.

Point is, if your system works, your making money and the owner is OK with the entire team, then your doing things right.
Also as stated above in an earlier post, your helper should cover his loaded costs, plus keep the company profitable. I wouldn’t expect the two of you to double what your doing now..
 
commelect192 said:
Yes, I keep very good records, and review bids against actual cost once complete. I would consider myself very accurate. I have won thousands of projects, over the last 13 years, only 3-4 projects lost money, another 10 or so have come close to breaking even. The remainder have been very profitable. I by no means win every bid I submit. I have grown comfortable with my process, and put the best number I can on a project with a profit margin I am comfortable with. I guess my main reason for my question is I am trying to justify hiring an assistant. Last year I bid $64MM worth of work, and won about $11MM, with no help. Profit-wise we had the best year ever. This year looks like I will be bidding even more, and winning more. I am just curious what other commercial electrical contractors are getting out of their estimators, and how much I can expect to increase my output hiring an assistant.
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You are winning 17% of your bid total.......that's excellent. The average hit rate used to be around 10-12%
 
commelect192 said:
Last year I bid $64MM worth of work, and won about $11MM, with no help. Profit-wise we had the best year ever. This year looks like I will be bidding even more, and winning more. I am just curious what other commercial electrical contractors are getting out of their estimators, and how much I can expect to increase my output hiring an assistant.
Click to expand...

Bidding $64MM in a year is busy. I can turn $2MM a week if I stay focused on it, which is tough when wearing a lot of hats. I know that number can be a bit arbitrary because the job factors can swing dramatically between any two; as in fixtures can be 20% of a job or 50% of a job. I think a more accurate measurement would be how many labor hours worth of work I can bid in a week, which is probably 2500-3000. Which I’m guessing is probably close to what you’re at.

Probably the most important thing you can do to judge how well you are bidding is to get feedback from GC’s about other EC bids whether you won or lost. If you’re work is anything like mine, it’s likely you’re bidding against the same EC’s on a lot of jobs. I always ask who else is bidding, and I try to keep my ear to the ground (suppliers) to gauge how busy my competitors are. If they’re also swamped like us, I know I’ll probably be competitive. If one of the bidders is slow, I know their bid is going to be low. I use that info sometimes to decide if I should bid a job. For example a couple of weeks ago I got an ITB on a local job; made some calls to see who else was bidding it, was told by an outside salesman that one of the EC’s bidding was out of work, so I gave that one up. I’m not greedy, we have plenty of work, and I knew he’d price it to get it.

Anyway, as for the feedback part, sometimes I’ll lose a job by 10%, but if I’m within 2-3% of everyone else that lost, I know I had a solid bid. The last four jobs I bid and won, one was 1%, the others were 3% and 5%.

Your company sounds like a pretty equal peer to me so if you ever want to talk about anything, hit me up, I’d be glad to chat.


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I'm a distribution overhead estimator for a large utility contractor. The region I'm responsible for, we have 5 customers (POCOs) and on an average week I'll crank out around 20 bids or so.

Most are small jobs (duration<week), but there's a good amount of large capital improvement projects as well. Dollar figure might be apples to oranges, but I personally put out over $100mm a year on average and my win rate is around 20%.

Comparing estimated to actual costs on completed jobs is very important. You definitely don't want your planned costs to be lower than what happened in the field, but you sure as hell don't want them to be higher either. Planned costs (labor and equipment in my case - customer provides material) should be dead on - if you want to make more on a job don't fudge the costs, raise the margins.

A good win % is defined by your particular market - how many competitors you have, ect.

You've got to keep your guys busy, but if you're winning a lot and swamped with work it means your prices are too low.
 
I keep a spreadsheet that I used to estimate the job.

One column has description, vendor, quantity, cost, total. Then a marked up column for the bid. Also shows if it was quoted (and source) or estimated.

Next if we win I add a column showing actuals and a difference.

It helps me catch issues with the bids and changes to the job.
 
commelect192 said:
I am an electrical estimator. I have been working for the same company for 13 years. I started with almost no electrical experience, and have gotten better and better over the years. I have no experience outside of my work environment to judge how well I am doing as an estimator, so I am genuinely curious how much volume, dollar wise, an estimator with my experience should be estimating each month. As well as how much contract value I should be winning each year. I keep meticulous records on what I bid so I have data on what bid/win each year, but just curious what is normal. The company I work for employs about 45 guys in the field, I am the sole estimator, and currently have no assistant, though one is on the way. We are a strictly commercial electrical contractor, winning projects in the $20K to $5MM range.
Click to expand...
you are doing an amazing job, I'm knew to estimating and managing, I was on the field for 11 years but now things have change and been though, I want to get you level, keep up the amazing work. and if you have any tips ill be glad to hear some. thanks
 
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