Help Est. Price

mbarham

I am doing work for a seasonal campsite. My client wants the site bordered with 180ft of 4 x 6 inch rr ties with rebar. He wants his flower bed bordered the same way adding an additional 20ft. 200ft total. Also, he needs 15 tons of red 3/8 inch stone spread on his site. About 3/4 of the site is able to be done by tractor and other needs to be done by wheel-borrow. I need help with the estimate. I usually bid way too low and I end up making too little.

NasConst_land

Typically with a job like that.. that has alot of varibles we do our bids a bit different. I would get all of your material cost, rebar, ties, stone, birm if you need a base for the ties, then get your other costs such as fuel, tractor hours, insurance, and so forth. Once you get that number, figure out your man hours. Typically for each many hour you need to charge double to cover your taxes, atleast that is how ive been told to do things since you match taxes. So if you pay a guy 9.00 an hour.. you need to charge 18.00 an hour maybe a little less. Once you figure your man hours out you get a labor price. So if you got 800.00 in material and other costs, and a 1000.00 in labor only. That makes 1800.00. This is where it can get tricky. You need to determin how much this job is really worth having. Also you need to compare your self to similar companies in the area, how do you rank not in size or anything. But how does your work compare. You could have 4 guys work for you and do ten times better work then a huge company that has 50 people with them and the repuatation. Therefor your work is worht more. What we do as a very respectable company in my area is take that number and multiply it by 1.5 this gives you your mark up and profit. there for after all labor and costs is paid you would be looking at around 900.00 profit, and a 2700.00 total job cost. This has never failed for me, actually end up making out a little better in some cases. Hope this helps, if you have any questions please feel free to ask. Thanks

Steve

Tom R

All good stuff there, NasCon, - - another thing I would say to mbarham, - - if what you're having trouble with is the 'man-hours', - - figure things out the same way you've been figuring, - - then use a multiplication factor based on how 'off' you were on your previously underestimated jobs. I believe that even if your time estimates are off, - - they at least tend to be consistent.

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mbarham

NasCon and TR thank you both.. i found your replies very helpful.