Outsourcing estimating?

[celtic]

this panel is about six square feet, and with .... lunch, the bill was $33,000...

Ya know....you can buy just a sandwich ~ you don't have to buy the business

 

[Greg Swartz]

...most of my stuff is small enough i'd swag it...
...mark and i will both walk something, and i'll swag it, and he'll bid it
proper, and we'll compare notes afterwards, and i'm consistently
about 20% low...randy

I think it was my 3rd commercial job as an EC. (And my biggest at the time at a whopping $45k) I did a bit more than SWAG, but some compared it to a SWAG...
A little over a year later... I'm still paying for it... it still hurts (*cringes*)

 

[nafis]

Two years ago I got hire to work as electrician for local builder who did every thing with in the house. He was in business for two year back then and worth 300 million dollars. He used to out source his estimating to Pakistan where he come from. With people working for him around the clock. I did not like how he run and do business. By lunch time I thanked him for the opportunity and shooke hand went home never looked back. Guess what he is out of business now.

 

[cadpoint]

I would never trust a square foot price vs a nut/bolt take off. A supply house is not a takeoff service either. I don't trust a supply house with MY counts and switchgear bill of material, much less have them count for me. They always make mistakes.
....

I realize that your saying you don't trust the supply house to do your take off, but the Switch Gear Price?

Care to quailify or expand your statement?

I'm kinda stumped here, its not like you can double check a supplier switchgear price, or have alot of places to get a big ticket item.

Maybe a conversation needs to happen to at least be an acknowledgment of your reciept for bid, cover the items and the bid date, and if there in the Game ! ?

 

[ITO]

Some of my competitors outsource and seem to be very successful with it. My experience with it was not so good; the company I used was also doing estimating for my competitors and they always seemed to get the job instead of me.

Paying for an estimate that was being used by my competitor left a bad taste in my mouth and now I do all my own estimating.

 

[cdslotz]

realize that your saying you don't trust the supply house to do your take off, but the Switch Gear Price?

Care to quailify or expand your statement?

I'm kinda stumped here, its not like you can double check a supplier switchgear price, or have alot of places to get a big ticket item.

Maybe a conversation needs to happen to at least be an acknowledgment of your reciept for bid, cover the items and the bid date, and if there in the Game ! ?

I don't send the supply house panel schedules or a riser diagram off of the drawings. I write up my BOM for that job because risers and schedules are wrong 90% of the time. That way their price is PER MY bill of material.
That makes supply house A and supply house B apples to apples. Then of course I can check their price. What's so hard to understand?

 

[jmsbrush]

square footing something isn't gonna work in a lot of areas....

this panel is about six square feet, and with the programming, and
400' of conduit, and prox sensors, and limit switches, and labor,
and lunch, the bill was $33,000...



randy

That is my whole point lol, I'm saying you can not put a square foot price on a service 200 or 2000 amp, The straps, the wire the fitting ect ect.