[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Bid Day (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 6/14/2013 7:24:36 AM EDT
| That point in which you sent lots of time putting a bid together. Put together a nice proposal. You are about to hit the send button on email and you start second guessing yourself. |
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It's stressful but isn't it worse when you're informed that you are low bidder? That's when I start second guessing. especially if they inform you of low bid status right away When I first started estimating I got the dreaded phone call. "Mr. Sparky. Are you sure you want to turn in that number" 
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I think Public Openings are the most stressful. Until the first bid is read and it is 25% lower that yours!
I've never had it happen to anything I bid, but I have been to a few openings where the low number was read last and there was a gasp by the entire room because the price was so low. Edit: I'm a Plumbing Estimator. What do you guys do? |
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I think Public Openings are the most stressful. Until the first bid is read and it is 25% lower that yours! I've never had it happen to anything I bid, but I have been to a few openings where the low number was read last and there was a gasp by the entire room because the price was so low. Edit: I'm a Plumbing Estimator. What do you guys do? I do electrical, and know a few of these other guys do as well. I always love it when the contract goes to the retarded low bid, because then I get to watch a competitor disappear |
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Quoted: I think Public Openings are the most stressful. Until the first bid is read and it is 25% lower that yours! I've never had it happen to anything I bid, but I have been to a few openings where the low number was read last and there was a gasp by the entire room because the price was so low. Edit: I'm a Plumbing Estimator. What do you guys do? Industrial Electrical. Just bid one on Tuesday where the low bid was $700k low on $3.4 mil worth of work. |
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We do plumbing, eletrical, hvac, and welding. Also do a bit of general construction.
It's mostly industrial/commercial. We've gotten to where a lot of times we don't even really break it down. We get a rough cost on parts, throw a markup on it, and guess on the labor. I'm the manager so I don't have time to do things down to the fitting like a true estimator would. We usually come out pretty good. The first job I did (I was working in the field, not a manager) we went over 480k on a 900k job. It almost bankrupted the company. As long as I don't screw up that bad I guess i'm doing okay. 
Some of these companies are so hard up to keep guys busy they will sell the parts for cost and charge 40 bucks an hour for labor. I feel sorry for them. When the gc tries to get me to price match on stuff like that sometimes all I can do is politely decline and make sure I keep in touch with the company who got the bid and hope I can buy their inventory for cheap when they go bankrupt. EDIT - A good example of how we bid things (lots of different types of jobs so hard to know how to bid) was our first general construction job last year: Boss - How much is the building? Me - 192k (It was a metal building with some office space and shop space.) Boss - What do you think we should bid? Me - Hell I don't know, add 20% and double it. That should cover labor, engineering, dirt work, and finish work? 
Boss - Okay. We ended up coming out pretty close, had to knock off 5k to price match another reputable contractor and made a little money on that job. |
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Oh wait you wanted 2 buildings? I only saw one set of plans. Yep. I put out a demo job for bid, did everything right, walked the bidders through the building, etc. Bid day one comes in silly low - like 1/3 of the competition. Turns out he missed the note on the drawing that said "Typical for all floors" - and my verbal reminder at the walkthrough. He bid demo for one floor - of a 5 story office building renovation. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Oh wait you wanted 2 buildings? I only saw one set of plans. Yep. I put out a demo job for bid, did everything right, walked the bidders through the building, etc. Bid day one comes in silly low - like 1/3 of the competition. Turns out he missed the note on the drawing that said "Typical for all floors" - and my verbal reminder at the walkthrough. He bid demo for one floor - of a 5 story office building renovation. Ouch! |
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Well you guys were just greedy the $640,000 guy wanted it more - General Contractor Quoted:
I bid one a couple weeks ago and the Plumbing Bids were as follows. 1.2 million $962 (My Bid) $880 and the low was.... $640,000!!!! Well they got it! lol GC is just as dumb. They will be looking for a new plumber when this one walks off the job. |
| I always used to find it interesting when I got beat with a total bid lower than my materials cost. And while I cut it tight on pricing, we still would have made money. Structured cabling, we had a lot of bigger parent companies come in and plain whore themselves out to beat us. |
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I think Public Openings are the most stressful. Until the first bid is read and it is 25% lower that yours! I've never had it happen to anything I bid, but I have been to a few openings where the low number was read last and there was a gasp by the entire room because the price was so low. Edit: I'm a Plumbing Estimator. What do you guys do? Project manager/estimator/scheduler/draftsman/... Industrial construction mostly dealing with the mining industry. |
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I too had to put out a couple of bids this morning. By 10:00am I could have really used a tranquilizer, I was fuming over how we do things around here.
We are not a large electrical contracting company, <$3million gross most years, in business for 31 years. Primarily we work in industrial/commercial with quite abit of EMCS and fire alarm in the past. Fortunately we have been able over the years to work on government facilities the majority of the time, however even that is getting very competitive. Can any of you more experienced guys recommend any estimating software? There has got to be a better way to keep up with our material pricing and organizing our take-off to proposal process. |
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Quoted: I too had to put out a couple of bids this morning. By 10:00am I could have really used a tranquilizer, I was fuming over how we do things around here. We are not a large electrical contracting company, <$3million gross most years, in business for 31 years. Primarily we work in industrial/commercial with quite abit of EMCS and fire alarm in the past. Fortunately we have been able over the years to work on government facilities the majority of the time, however even that is getting very competitive. Can any of you more experienced guys recommend any estimating software? There has got to be a better way to keep up with our material pricing and organizing our take-off to proposal process. Accubid Pro. Pricey, but worth it. You can update the database pricing with any of the major pricing services. |
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I too had to put out a couple of bids this morning. By 10:00am I could have really used a tranquilizer, I was fuming over how we do things around here. We are not a large electrical contracting company, <$3million gross most years, in business for 31 years. Primarily we work in industrial/commercial with quite abit of EMCS and fire alarm in the past. Fortunately we have been able over the years to work on government facilities the majority of the time, however even that is getting very competitive. Can any of you more experienced guys recommend any estimating software? There has got to be a better way to keep up with our material pricing and organizing our take-off to proposal process. We did our own with Xcel spreadsheets. Still have to update pricing manually. Once a month I ask the supply houses for a commodities list and update. Any idea on what accubid costs are? |
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I too had to put out a couple of bids this morning. By 10:00am I could have really used a tranquilizer, I was fuming over how we do things around here. We are not a large electrical contracting company, <$3million gross most years, in business for 31 years. Primarily we work in industrial/commercial with quite abit of EMCS and fire alarm in the past. Fortunately we have been able over the years to work on government facilities the majority of the time, however even that is getting very competitive. Can any of you more experienced guys recommend any estimating software? There has got to be a better way to keep up with our material pricing and organizing our take-off to proposal process. Accubid Pro. Pricey, but worth it. You can update the database pricing with any of the major pricing services. Thanks. I have been looking at their products. Do they sell just the estimating program or do they push you to buy the suite of products? Also, I notice they show the typical project value for Accubid Pro at $1million+, would the program have any hangups being put to use for smaller projects? |
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I too had to put out a couple of bids this morning. By 10:00am I could have really used a tranquilizer, I was fuming over how we do things around here. We are not a large electrical contracting company, <$3million gross most years, in business for 31 years. Primarily we work in industrial/commercial with quite abit of EMCS and fire alarm in the past. Fortunately we have been able over the years to work on government facilities the majority of the time, however even that is getting very competitive. Can any of you more experienced guys recommend any estimating software? There has got to be a better way to keep up with our material pricing and organizing our take-off to proposal process. Accubid Pro. Pricey, but worth it. You can update the database pricing with any of the major pricing services. Thanks. I have been looking at their products. Do they sell just the estimating program or do they push you to buy the suite of products? And what does it cost? |
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I too had to put out a couple of bids this morning. By 10:00am I could have really used a tranquilizer, I was fuming over how we do things around here. We are not a large electrical contracting company, <$3million gross most years, in business for 31 years. Primarily we work in industrial/commercial with quite abit of EMCS and fire alarm in the past. Fortunately we have been able over the years to work on government facilities the majority of the time, however even that is getting very competitive. Can any of you more experienced guys recommend any estimating software? There has got to be a better way to keep up with our material pricing and organizing our take-off to proposal process. Accubid Pro. Pricey, but worth it. You can update the database pricing with any of the major pricing services. Thanks. I have been looking at their products. Do they sell just the estimating program or do they push you to buy the suite of products? You can buy just the estimating software. They'll do a live online demo with you if you're interested. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I too had to put out a couple of bids this morning. By 10:00am I could have really used a tranquilizer, I was fuming over how we do things around here. We are not a large electrical contracting company, <$3million gross most years, in business for 31 years. Primarily we work in industrial/commercial with quite abit of EMCS and fire alarm in the past. Fortunately we have been able over the years to work on government facilities the majority of the time, however even that is getting very competitive. Can any of you more experienced guys recommend any estimating software? There has got to be a better way to keep up with our material pricing and organizing our take-off to proposal process. Accubid Pro. Pricey, but worth it. You can update the database pricing with any of the major pricing services. Thanks. I have been looking at their products. Do they sell just the estimating program or do they push you to buy the suite of products? And what does it cost? I think Pro is running $2500 per license. |
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I too had to put out a couple of bids this morning. By 10:00am I could have really used a tranquilizer, I was fuming over how we do things around here. We are not a large electrical contracting company, <$3million gross most years, in business for 31 years. Primarily we work in industrial/commercial with quite abit of EMCS and fire alarm in the past. Fortunately we have been able over the years to work on government facilities the majority of the time, however even that is getting very competitive. Can any of you more experienced guys recommend any estimating software? There has got to be a better way to keep up with our material pricing and organizing our take-off to proposal process. OnCenter |
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Well, I'm in the wrong thread. I thought we were talking about a different type of bid day. This. You can always tell the guys who where in a fraternity lol This isn't what I was expecting...hit me up when you start talking about Greek letters
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Quoted: Thanks everybody. For those of you who have been around long enough would you say jobs are bid the same as 20 or 10 years ago? Generally - yes. Margins have gotten a lot tighter and I'm more select in who I quote to, but putting together the bids hasn't really changed. |
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Thanks everybody. For those of you who have been around long enough would you say jobs are bid the same as 20 or 10 years ago? Generally - yes. Margins have gotten a lot tighter and I'm more select in who I quote to, but putting together the bids hasn't really changed. Let me ask you this. What sort of markup on parts do you use? We do around 10% for big equipment (600k plus) and 30-50% for small things (pipe, fittings, misc. material). We charge $45/hr for helpers, 65-90/hr for techs depending on how much skill/experience they have and what type of work they do. Welders are 65, hvacr is 78, install foreman is 90, electrician is 78, etc. |
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That point in which you sent lots of time putting a bid together. Put together a nice proposal. You are about to hit the send button on email and you start second guessing yourself. Because you realize that you misspelled several words in your proposal and spell check didn't catch it..... |