Wiring new residential developments.

[WJR]

Toll brothers
beazer homes
pulte homes
centex homes

Someone has to wire the homes for these builders i hear about all the time. right? or are they looking to hurt us electricians also? sounds like a bad market to be in the way you guys stories are going.

Hi Brad,

Toll Brothers, Pulte Homes and Centex are some of my customers. They are typically good to work for. Their superintendents are usually qualified and know how to run a smooth project. I have never had a problem with payouts.

Large tract projects have certain benefits. When you bid on a project, you are actually bidding on a lot of homes. I can sell one job and have work for a multitude of years.

The key is that you really need to be confident that your estimate is correct. You have to know what your true costs are. To win these type of projects, you need to go in on your base bid very, very tight. It is the cost of admission.

You will make your margins in the options that the home buyers select. You will need to provide the builder with a standard option price list that contains the standard options that a home buyer will add to the base model. Our margins on options range between 60 to 360 percent. It's really an illusion. It's a matter of taking the prices as high as you can while keeping them under the point of pain. It's not taking advantage of the home owner. They are either going to pay for it in the base price or in options. Since the builder is more interested in being able to keep the base price of the homes low, it is expected that you are going to make higher margins in the options. However, you need to help the sales people with selling electrical options. I provide them with electrical option catalogs that they give to the home buyer. This makes a HUGE difference in revenue.

You also need to keep in mind that these projects consist of a hand full of models that will be built over and over again. Because of the repetitive nature, your crew will become very fast at the rough. Also, when your crew finishes work at a certain lot, the next house is just right down the street. This helps minimize down time. You can also keep your van on site. This reduces your fleet cost. We utilize small trailers that we back up to the house. The tools and material are right there. If you give two of your employees keys to the trailer, work can still continue if your foreman can't make it to the job.

You can make good money on tract projects. It's just a different way of thinking.

You asked about how to estimate these types of jobs. We actually developed our own estimating program. It turned out so good that we decided to offer it to other contractors. The program is called TurboBid. (www.TurboBid.net) Mike Holt has sent out numerous newsletters regarding TurboBid. You can download the free trial and judge for yourself. We have also made the electrical options catalog available through our website.

If you have any questions, you can contact me at BillR@TurboBid.net.

God bless and good luck with your endeavor.

Bill Ruffner

 

[MagnoliaElec]

I came up in the trade in Fl where new homes were flying out of the ground 2002ish. All were what I would now call semi custom. At times we would have these thing turned over to a new HO in less than 9 weeks from breaking ground. Our crews were typically two man crews we were paid piece rate and we were fast. A typical rough was 3.5 8 hr days for a 3200ft 5 bed pool 40 or so cans fan pre wire in all rooms for which we were paid 1200.00. If we put in some real effort we could clear two of these houses a week. Each house was within a few hundred yards of the other and it went bang bang bang. We did neat work and my rarely had any sort of warranty issue. We the crew would walk the house with the HO and super on the 2nd day and upsell them. Our annual bonus was a percentage of changes and it was always something to look foreward to. Both contractors I worked for lived very well. One sold out for a princely sum and the other is still doing very well inspite of the near standstill in the Fl resi market. On the other hand my brother got his bank account handed to him in the very same market conditions that made these other guys wealthy. Know what you need to do to make money in that market segment.. the money is there for the right EC ( not me)

 

[peter d]

Well there you go. Bid it tight or you'll never get the work. Make money on the extras. Hit the ground running and work fast.

 

[WJR]

Well there you go. Bid it tight or you'll never get the work. Make money on the extras. Hit the ground running and work fast.

Well said.

There are always ways that we can save some time (and money) by working smarter. Often times it's hard to keep our minds open to new and different ways of doing things. The nice thing with the repetitive nature of tract projects is that you have an opportunity to keep tweaking how you do a certain model. Before you know it, your crew is consistently beating the estimated hours. I had a foreman that use to tell me that seconds add up to minutes and minutes add up to hours. If your guy's full boat cost is running you $60 per hour, that's a buck a minute. When you look at the big picture and add up those minutes on an annual basis, you're no longer talking about chump change.

 

[masterinbama]

don't put your eggs in one basket. If you do be sure you can trust the GC I get more work by word of mouth from homeowners and referrals from GC'S than I will ever get from advertisement.

 

[BackInTheHabit]

Toll brothers
beazer homes
pulte homes
centex homes

Someone has to wire the homes for these builders i hear about all the time. right? or are they looking to hurt us electricians also? sounds like a bad market to be in the way you guys stories are going.

Beazer Homes has pulled out of KY altogether and has left several subdivisions around here with only a few homes built. Another builder has also pulled out and has layed off all but about 5 of thier employees in the state.

Your profit on trac builders would only be around $100 - $200 anyway. Even if you start work for a trac builder you can be outbid by $0.05 (5 cents) a square foot. It happened to me years ago.

 

[BackInTheHabit]

This is wiring in a Pulte tract home in southern California:

Does this look like it was done slow and neat, or fast and cheap? I don't know what part of the country you are in, but if you want to wire tracts this is what you'll be competing against. It's also the kind of work you'll end up having to do.

Someone call an exterminator. This home is infested with spiders.