GC that always wants me to give pricing with no solid plans

J

JoeNorm

Senior Member
Location
WA
I have a GC that gives me a lot of good work. He is always asking for pricing before a job but the plans provided have very little electrical, if any. They eventually probably will get detailed electrical plans, but these are preliminary.

I think he just wants it for initial estimate, then everything always ends up T$M anyway. This is high-end residential, think small compound with main house, ADU, and garage on a view property.

I could give him a guess? But what is the point? What do you say/ask for in this situation?
 
Your price is as good as the plans.

High and low doesn't necessarily work either, some will always shoot for the low but yet expect the higher cost installation.
 
Give him a number but make sure he knows it's a budget number and not a quote. I would give it to him on a formal letter head noting it's a budget only number, final pricing will be provided when complete plans are available
 
any guess-timate that i give someone must go hand-in-hand with a solid scope of work, itemized out. especially, when there is no set plan to go off of.

otherwise, the customer hears the number, and thinks they get to do anything and everything in that job for the same $$$. all they ever remember is the price, not the number of openings to go with it.

the downside of taking the time to plan/design/bid with a scope of work is, sometimes, they will take that opening count, and give it to another contractor for a second price. depending upon how good of a relationship you have with your GC, is how much you trust your design work not to get sold out to a lower bidder. but that's between him and you, to make sure your time spent pricing was not spent in vain.
 
JoeNorm said:
I have a GC that gives me a lot of good work. He is always asking for pricing before a job but the plans provided have very little electrical, if any. They eventually probably will get detailed electrical plans, but these are preliminary.

I think he just wants it for initial estimate, then everything always ends up T$M anyway. This is high-end residential, think small compound with main house, ADU, and garage on a view property.

I could give him a guess? But what is the point? What do you say/ask for in this situation?
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If you do this work the "guess" should be capable of being an educated one. Houses are pretty easy to square foot. With adders per foot for services laterals, wrong end service, pool hot tub, etc. BUT, as roger said, it should ALWAYS be a budget and Master Nater said about itemized.
 
Give him a safe range, not a hard number. If a project like that always lands between $5,000 and $10,000, or $10,000 and $20,000, just tell him that and say it depends how much stuff they want. A ballpark is probably all he needs for initial estimate.
 
I can think of a lot of ways this could be going. If your TM was coming in near bi9ds I might be inclined to simply bid it 2x and call it a day. Lots of detailed bidding simply adds to the cost in the end and maybe all concerned figure it aint worth it and drives it to the lowest end and doesnt figure they get the quality from the lowest price.
I bid a school, I was local and I think the others figured I was going to be low to get it and I bid actual,,, didnt get it, these guys been thru it before but everyone amazed I was hi. Somehow it went from SD qo to challenger in the end but when all the dust settled my numbers were good.
They just opened the bids, awarded on price, no check to see if any of it was the same.
Others didnt even include whole section's, just spit a number out and spend next year on back charges etc.
 
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