Estimating

After finishing the Bakersfield Broadway store, we were told that there were going to be a lot more of these stores to build and that we had a good chance of securing the contracts on them. But, one Broadway store was taking just a little over 6 weeks to complete and that left a lot of time in a year for more projects for us…or for time off if we couldn’t get any contracts. So I was called back in to the office to do more estimating. It was assumed that since I was now a journeyman, I was more knowledgeable about production values.

I would begin each day by reading the “Green Sheet”, a trade newspaper that listed every job that was being planned. The statistics for each job included the location, the bid date, the trades that bids were needed for, the estimated value and a list of general contractors that were requesting sub-bids.

We were trying to avoid the small jobs, as the margins were usually just as small as the contract price. We looked for jobs in the mid-range of $250,000 to $1,000,000. And a rule of thumb was that our trade, drywall, would make up about 10% of the estimated contract price…so the numbers above would translate to $25,000 to $100,000 in drywall work for us.

After reading the Green Sheet, I would make up a list of contractors to visit and grab my map book. I would have to go to the contractor’s office to see the plans and spend as much time as necessary in their plan rooms while I estimated our work scope. Often, I would find some competitor had already arrived and was using the only available set of plans. That meant that I had to drive on to the next contractor’s office and hopefully find a set of plans that wasn’t being used.

I might spend a whole day driving around the Los Angeles area and see just one set of plans. Very frustrating!

And after I finished my estimate, I had to come up with a bid price, or prices. A high price, a low price, a “field” price and a “walk away” low price. That would be the lowest price we could use and only used when we were desperate for work. If someone (our competition) beat that price…we walked away.

On bid day we had to have all of our job knowledge ready at hand when we began to call in our bids. The general contractors would often ask about just what it was that you had included in your price…and your answer was sometimes the key to getting a job. “Yes, we included the drywall in the elevator machine room.” might be the right answer to give, even if you had no idea as to where the machine room was!