Estimating by Task?

[mooreaaryan]

I am estimating work by task. Trying to understand to account for wire pull section. Should I be using the length of the run times number of conductors to get the manhours or should it just be the length of the run regardless of the conductor count? The base unit I am using is NECA devalued but our historical information is not tight enough to be reliable due to use of temp workers and contractors on job. If you're a pro estimator I would love to get advice on best practice for estimating and job budgeting.

 

[Omid]

I’m definitely not a pro estimator, and I haven’t done any large projects in years since I switched to service work. But back when I was doing it, I used the run length times the number of conductors approach. During conduit takeoff, I had a few rules. For example, for lighting circuits, I would typically assume ½" conduit with 3 #12 wires plus ground always, even though on the job site we often ended up using ¾" conduit with 6 wires in most cases. Another approach I used was applying a deduction factor when there were more than three wires in a conduit, to account for the pulling multiple wires.