I just returned from a construction site that I do every 2 weeks for the client. This job has been ongoing now for almost 8 months with at least 3 more to go. While I was there the local Police Chief stopped by to hang out (he's a very good friend) and he asked a question that I'm not sure anyone has addressed here and I thought I'd put something out there. He said, "How in the world do you know how to price something like this because it changes so much from the beginning until the finished product. How do you know what it's going to be when it's complete and know you've put enough into the bid?"
When you're pricing/bidding a construction job you need to know what the finished product will look like and how much is expected of you. Let's take the current job as an example:
Initially there was a small strip mall standing that had to be demolished and removed. This covered about 8 acres of work and initially this is the only thing we had to go on in terms of size of the project.
Once the strip mall was gone the project grew by about 400% as the crews removed trees, asphalt, outer buildings and created a much larger clearing. So of course my Scope of Work just went up, by 400%.
After the initial "rough" excavating was done the crew moved to an adjacent area and started clearing more but at an elevated location. This doubled the size of the project once again. The project is now 800% bigger than it had originally looked like it was going to be.
Now as building progresses you have more "stuff" to take pictures of (we document inventory, equipment, catch drains etc) and as it goes along your shot list grows and grows. What started out for me as a 7 minute (from the time I turned off my car until I started it again) is now roughly 38min and it's still growing.
Fortunately for me we met with the Const company long before anything was done and got a vision for the COMPLETE project and also what they expected from us on each visit. We knew from the start exactly what they wanted/needed and built this into our bids for them. We bid it high and I'm pretty sure we got it because we had a strong high quality port folio that we presented in our initial meeting. We priced it on the final project and what was expected as opposed to what we thought the project would be. If we had not done the research and had those early meetings my $$ per minute would be minimal at best at this point.
So before you go pricing a big job know what you're looking at, what your client expects, and what you need to make per HR to maintain the company.
When you're pricing/bidding a construction job you need to know what the finished product will look like and how much is expected of you. Let's take the current job as an example:
Initially there was a small strip mall standing that had to be demolished and removed. This covered about 8 acres of work and initially this is the only thing we had to go on in terms of size of the project.
Once the strip mall was gone the project grew by about 400% as the crews removed trees, asphalt, outer buildings and created a much larger clearing. So of course my Scope of Work just went up, by 400%.
After the initial "rough" excavating was done the crew moved to an adjacent area and started clearing more but at an elevated location. This doubled the size of the project once again. The project is now 800% bigger than it had originally looked like it was going to be.
Now as building progresses you have more "stuff" to take pictures of (we document inventory, equipment, catch drains etc) and as it goes along your shot list grows and grows. What started out for me as a 7 minute (from the time I turned off my car until I started it again) is now roughly 38min and it's still growing.
Fortunately for me we met with the Const company long before anything was done and got a vision for the COMPLETE project and also what they expected from us on each visit. We knew from the start exactly what they wanted/needed and built this into our bids for them. We bid it high and I'm pretty sure we got it because we had a strong high quality port folio that we presented in our initial meeting. We priced it on the final project and what was expected as opposed to what we thought the project would be. If we had not done the research and had those early meetings my $$ per minute would be minimal at best at this point.
So before you go pricing a big job know what you're looking at, what your client expects, and what you need to make per HR to maintain the company.