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jmsbrush

jmsbrush

Senior Member
Location
Central Florida
I met a GC last week and he wanted me to give a price on on some work. He does residential. So I gave him a price and last week and he said he will take it to his brother. The brother I guess is the one who handles the prices and things of that nature. In this particular area EC's from what I hear do piece rate pricing. I do not. I use Turbo Bid for my Residential bids which I really like and on small jobs and service work I flat rate. My flat rate is a lot higher than some of the other EC's piece work! Anyways he calls me today and asked me if I could give a break down on everything I do . Like how much is a switch, a recept, can light and ect. He wants me to piece rate it and he wants to know how I came to my price. He says I'm not price shopping it just gives us and Idea on how much we need to estimate when we do our bids, and I assure you you will be getting plenty of work! I have heard that before.I don't know! I need the work to be honest, but there just seems to be to many variables. If he likes my price he should go with it, and if he doesn't then he should find some else. I'm torn. Any suggestions?
 
My gut tells me that giving him unit prices can only be used as a weapon against you, since he has other unit prices to compare it to.
 
That what I think too, and just gives other Ec's a chance to underbid my work. Like If my price for one switch is $75.00 then he'll just show that to the Other Ec and hell do it for $70.00
 
Simple.

Tell him to count the openings and divide into your price.

That should give him a ballpark figure to work with.
 
Years ago, I worked for a GC. After about 5 jobs ranging from small to two larger projects, he asked me for unit pricing on the contracts I did for him. He also said that he liked my work and was going to use me more. He wanted the unit pricing to ball park bid work so I would not have to visit every job, as he did not always land every job.
I gave him my entire pricing sheet. I continued to work for him till the day I closed my shop...it worked out very well for both of us.

The moral of this story is, sometimes this method works for the EC, sometimes it does not. You have to be the judge of how you feel about your situation.
 
Pierre's points are valid and I give unit prices to one of my GCs for the reasons he stated. But in this case, since you don't have a working relationship with the guy already I would be hesitant to just throw him your numbers.
 
Hi James,

Since you're using TurboBid, I know that you have already giving him an extremely detailed bid package. You have given him a quantity take-off by category, a quantity take-off by room and a value engineered quantity take-off by room. You have also given him a very detailed formal proposal. If you've given him the standard option pricing schedule, he at least has prices for all of the items that can be added to the job.

I would explain to him that there are just too many cost variables from job to job. It's impossible to give him unit prices that would apply to future projects.

  • You're labor cost is determined by the crew that will be manning the job. You might have 1 Foreman and two journeyman on one job and a Foreman and an apprentice on another. The labor costs on these two jobs will be quite a bit different.
  • Sometimes local code requirements will have an effect on pricing
  • Your supervision costs could very from job to job
  • With the price of gas, the distance to a job will have an effect on pricing

Not only are there cost variables between jobs, it's difficult to assign a price to an individual item. It's easy enough to determine an item's labor and material costs. The problem is with the project costs. You can't just divide the costs by the number of units. Each item has different labor hours. You would need to calculate the project costs by a labor unit factor and that is a nightmare.

I've had to deal with some builders that wanted unit pricing. It's really hard telling them that you can't do it. You want the job so bad that you're afraid that you won't get the job if you don't do what they want.

I've really enjoyed the times that we have talked on the phone. I would love to have someone with your personality representing my company. A huge part of the contracting business comes down to relationships. Just try to explain the difficulty in providing unit prices. If other people are providing them with unit prices, it's because they really don't know what they are doing. I'd like to think that your builder will understand and appreciate the fact that you are a professional and that you really understand the variable intricacies in pricing a job

I understand your delima James. If you want to go over anything, please give me a call.

Take care and good luck.

Bill Ruffner
TurboBid
 
There are two options either you try to work with him or you don't. As Pierre said this could be a good thing or you could get screwed. You decide.

Maybe I am missing something but it seems fairly simple to come up with a unit price for certain items that would more than CYA, then explain these numbers may be high in some circumstances and low in other cases and that a per job bid would be preferred.

We do some fairly complicated jobs but I have a few sales companies that need to have a ball park idea to get a fast foot in the door, my unit prices are high and SAFE for me. A few times I have not made what I would like but the volume of work I get from these folks and the chance to make up for the few losses make any hassle worth the effort.
 
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