Bidding low rise multi-family residential

[Canadiansparky347v]

I have been invited to bid two low rise projects by a GC that the mechanical side of our company is currently already working with on a new school project, they have the CM contract for both of these new low rise jobs. Myself and my estimator both do not have a lot of experience bidding this type of work, we mainly focus on tilt ups and tenant improvements commercial work. I have worked as an apprentice on multi family and also towers but never ran them as a journeyman. For bidding the suites which are typicals, do you guys factor in an efficiency percentage for multiple suites based on experience that the guys always get faster as they do the same suites multiple times?

Any input would help with putting our quote together, I currently use Trimble Bidwinner for our estimating

 

[brantmacga]

I’ve tried to bid some large (to me) multi family stuff; electrical contracts in the $2MM-$5MM range. Ive yet to land one of those jobs.

I have a good friend that is a large multi-family GC; he has sent me many projects to bid but I finally gave up. It’s just too competitive and I’m not setup for it. The EC he primarily uses runs around $30MM/yr in revenue, and he has made me look like a fool on stuff I priced against him. Basically, you need cheap unskilled labor. They’re using $12/hr guys to build these things.

Even with our pre-fab shop I couldn’t be competitive on these projects. I know with my buddy exactly where I’d have to be on price, but that would require a completely separate labor division that I don’t have, and would really struggle to fill those openings in our current labor environment.


Also, a lot of these trades are paying piecemeal for the work. When you look at the numbers, it equates to roughly $10-$12/hr for an 8/hr day. So those were the rates I was trying to compete with.

You need to make a friend in your area that’s doing this work and get some local intel.


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[brantmacga]

My neighbor is also an EC and does quite a bit of multi-family work. I haven’t talked much in detail but he did mention to me one thing he does to save time is a star topography on everything. So every recep in a room is one cable going to a single J-box. Little things like that to add efficiency.


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[electrofelon]

I’ve tried to bid some large (to me) multi family stuff; electrical contracts in the $2MM-$5MM range. Ive yet to land one of those jobs.

I have a good friend that is a large multi-family GC; he has sent me many projects to bid but I finally gave up. It’s just too competitive and I’m not setup for it. The EC he primarily uses runs around $30MM/yr in revenue, and he has made me look like a fool on stuff I priced against him. Basically, you need cheap unskilled labor. They’re using $12/hr guys to build these things.

Even with our pre-fab shop I couldn’t be competitive on these projects. I know with my buddy exactly where I’d have to be on price, but that would require a completely separate labor division that I don’t have, and would really struggle to fill those openings in our current labor environment.


Also, a lot of these trades are paying piecemeal for the work. When you look at the numbers, it equates to roughly $10-$12/hr for an 8/hr day. So those were the rates I was trying to compete with.

You need to make a friend in your area that’s doing this work and get some local intel.


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Just curious, is licensing not required or quite lax there where you can have a ton of low wage guys doing electrical? I am guessing that is the case. I worked on some utility scale solar projects in GA 4-5 years ago and all of us were from NY and of course no one had a GA license. The solar developer had a "license holder" for the project. He showed up once a week for an hour or so.......No once seemd to care.

 

[brantmacga]

Just curious, is licensing not required or quite lax there where you can have a ton of low wage guys doing electrical? I am guessing that is the case. I worked on some utility scale solar projects in GA 4-5 years ago and all of us were from NY and of course no one had a GA license. The solar developer had a "license holder" for the project. He showed up once a week for an hour or so.......No once seemd to care.

License is required for the EC pulling the permit here in GA, but not for anyone on site working. Same in Florida and everywhere I’ve worked in the Carolinas. Only a couple of places I’ve worked in Alabama require a licensed electrician or J-man on site at all times.

Solar is really going hard in GA right now. Blattner Energy seems to have the lock on most of the work I see in the southern half of the state.


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[electrofelon]

License is required for the EC pulling the permit here in GA, but not for anyone on site working. Same in Florida and everywhere I’ve worked in the Carolinas. Only a couple of places I’ve worked in Alabama require a licensed electrician or J-man on site at all times.

Solar is really going hard in GA right now. Blattner Energy seems to have the lock on most of the work I see in the southern half of the state.


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Good to hear solar is still strong in GA. For utility scale stuff, I think its a lot about working with a "solar friendly" utility. The solar developer we worked for said Georgia power was generally easy to work with and thats why they did so many projects there.

We did several projects in Toccoa, and one in Jakin which is close to the Chattahoochee river. I swam in it after work one day. Us yanks had a hard time with the heat.

 

[James L]

Basically, you need cheap unskilled labor. They’re using $12/hr guys to build these things.

My brother was wiring dorm housing a few years ago, and that's what it was. Cheap guys who could work fast.

And each person only has one job. A small crew to nail up boxes, a couple of guys drilling out, a few guys pulling wire, and a makeup crew. My brother pulled wire faster than anybody I've ever seen, so that's what he did

One day my brother called me because he was working a Saturday alone. There werent any units nailed up and drilled out, so there was no wire yo pull. So he was there trying to make up, and having problems. He had 5 years "experience" but couldn't make up a 3-wire home run to a 2-gang box at the kitchen sink for disposal and gfci circuits.

I started wiring some upscale duplexes and 4-plexes about 12 years ago, and my boss was sending guys over to help who made $25+ per hour, and I told him he was gonna go broke if he didn't get some $12-15.00 guys. After 10 units he quit because he was losing $1,500 per unit

 

[cdslotz]

I’ve tried to bid some large (to me) multi family stuff; electrical contracts in the $2MM-$5MM range. Ive yet to land one of those jobs.

I have a good friend that is a large multi-family GC; he has sent me many projects to bid but I finally gave up. It’s just too competitive and I’m not setup for it. The EC he primarily uses runs around $30MM/yr in revenue, and he has made me look like a fool on stuff I priced against him. Basically, you need cheap unskilled labor. They’re using $12/hr guys to build these things.

Even with our pre-fab shop I couldn’t be competitive on these projects. I know with my buddy exactly where I’d have to be on price, but that would require a completely separate labor division that I don’t have, and would really struggle to fill those openings in our current labor environment.


Also, a lot of these trades are paying piecemeal for the work. When you look at the numbers, it equates to roughly $10-$12/hr for an 8/hr day. So those were the rates I was trying to compete with.

You need to make a friend in your area that’s doing this work and get some local intel.


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I'm sure they use sub-crews...they pay a flat rate for rough in or trim out...basically piecemeal. The difference is the prime EC is not liable for their taxes, insurance, etc. Probably half these subs don't pay taxes either. Ads for sub-crews on Craigslist dominate

 

[Canadiansparky347v]

We are in BC, licensing is supposed to be mandatory but a lot of guys skirt around it and hire "helper electricians" to justify low wage guys. I have heard that our current government is going to make this standard to have registered apprentices on all sites, they are a pro union government and probably doing this because of union lobbying.

From my past experience on these types of jobs there are a ton of juniors running around doing these tasks. Lots of guys who I have met spent their whole careers on maybe 2 or 3 large resi projects and don't know very much. The smart ones get promoted to a foreman but make a 4th year or low journeyman wage, its almost criminal how these guys are treated sometimes. I know exactly what you mean with the guys doing only one or two jobs on the project, did it myself and decided to leave to work for smaller companies to learn my trade and go out on my own afterwards.

I plan on bidding this with a blended rate of a crew based on juniors and with a couple senior guys to run them

 

[petersonra]

We are in BC, licensing is supposed to be mandatory but a lot of guys skirt around it and hire "helper electricians" to justify low wage guys. I have heard that our current government is going to make this standard to have registered apprentices on all sites, they are a pro union government and probably doing this because of union lobbying.

From my past experience on these types of jobs there are a ton of juniors running around doing these tasks. Lots of guys who I have met spent their whole careers on maybe 2 or 3 large resi projects and don't know very much. The smart ones get promoted to a foreman but make a 4th year or low journeyman wage, its almost criminal how these guys are treated sometimes. I know exactly what you mean with the guys doing only one or two jobs on the project, did it myself and decided to leave to work for smaller companies to learn my trade and go out on my own afterwards.

I plan on bidding this with a blended rate of a crew based on juniors and with a couple senior guys to run them

It is not criminal to pay someone to do a job for what they are willing to work for.

The more you break the jobs down, the easier the job is. You break it down enough and a monkey can do it. The thing is those guys do that same task over and over, probably do it better than a journeyman would.

My guess is if you try and bid it with higher priced labor you will be wasting your time. You probably can't be competitive bidding this kind of thing with $100/hour labor. A couple of relatively expensive guys to watch over the cheap labor is probably your only hope of being competitive. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing it that way.

 

[brantmacga]

You probably can't be competitive bidding this kind of thing with $100/hour labor.

Homie I was bidding them with an average wage of $25/hr and got wasted.

 

[cdslotz]

Homie I was bidding them with an average wage of $25/hr and got wasted.

Resi and service contractors have zero understanding of average shop rates that we use on large construction. A commercial job with 3000 est man/hrs they think you multiply that times (in this case, $100/hr)

 

[Canadiansparky347v]

True that it is not criminal to pay someone what they will take, but some of the contractors definitely take advantage of the guys. We focus on the mid range commercial projects where our labour rates with burden costs can be factored in and still have a competitive bid. Covid has definitely dropped our bidding rate but we are still winning jobs.

My blended rate that I am looking at for these low rise jobs is almost scary low

 

[brantmacga]

Resi and service contractors have zero understanding of average shop rates that we use on large construction. A commercial job with 3000 est man/hrs they think you multiply that times (in this case, $100/hr)

I've seen a surprising number of comments here lately on some of the pricing threads indicating they would charge $100/hr on a bid. I've just left them alone.

 

[James L]

I've seen a surprising number of comments here lately on some of the pricing threads indicating they would charge $100/hr on a bid. I've just left them alone.

Guys like that have no idea where the money is supposed to go. When you spend two or three hours selling and visiting a 5-hour job, you have to charge $100+ per hour. But when you spend 35 hours bidding a 1.5 million dollar job, there's no way anybody can justify trying to get that much money per hour.

 

[James L]

Missed my edit time...

Guys like that have no idea where the money is supposed to go. When you spend two or three hours selling and bidding a 5-hour job, you have to charge $100+ per hour for production time. That's the only way to cover your off-site work.

But when you spend 35 hours bidding a $1.5 million job, there's no way anybody can justify trying to get that much money per hour for production time

 

[cdslotz]

Missed my edit time...

Estimating is non-productive. It's part of overhead

 

[petersonra]

I find it curious that one of the posters thinks it is almost criminal to pay less than what he is paying his employees.

I don't know how much of that $25 an hour he is budgeting for labor goes for fringe benefits and other direct labor costs like unemployment insurance and workers comp. I bet you that $25 an hour gets down to 10 or $12 an hour pretty quick once you figure in the cost of health insurance, although being in Canada you do have a slight advantage there.

 

[James L]

Estimating is non-productive. It's part of overhead

Exactly. That's my point.

If you do service work, where estimating can realistically amount to 25% of your time, you have to charge $100+ per production hour in order to cover that much nonproduction time.

But if estimating only accounts for 3-5% of your time, there's no way it justifies that kind of production rate.

 

[petersonra]

Exactly. That's my point.

If you do service work, where estimating can realistically amount to 25% of your time, you have to charge $100+ per production hour in order to cover that much nonproduction time.

But if estimating only accounts for 3-5% of your time, there's no way it justifies that kind of production rate.

There is no requirement that your rate be justified at all. It's all about whether your rate is acceptable to the customer. Most times no one is going to care all that much if they have to pay $200 an hour to get their electrical service fixed if they have no power and have to call someone out in the middle of the night to fix it. There are less likely to want to pay those kind of rates to have a whole house wired.