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.

 

[Adamv7010]

In most cases, using temp workers typically warrants using a full NECA column for certain things.

As far as handling wire pulling for multiple wires in a single conduit....labor factoring. For example, I believe #12 Thhn is 6 hours per 1000ft. Say you're pulling 4 wires in a 1000ft run. You're not going to need 24 hrs to make that pull, but you'll need a little time to set up, pull a string, lube, move from jbox to jbox, then pull wire, etc. At say, 75% of the full unit value, you'd have roughly 18 hrs to pull that run of wire. If i recall correctly, NECA doesn't provide a factor for multiple wires. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on that.

Some softwares such as Intellibid and Accubid will auto factor those things for you, if set up right.

Disclaimer, numbers are made up.