Last year I bid $64MM worth of work, and won about $11MM, with no help. Profit-wise we had the best year ever. This year looks like I will be bidding even more, and winning more. I am just curious what other commercial electrical contractors are getting out of their estimators, and how much I can expect to increase my output hiring an assistant.
Bidding $64MM in a year is busy. I can turn $2MM a week if I stay focused on it, which is tough when wearing a lot of hats. I know that number can be a bit arbitrary because the job factors can swing dramatically between any two; as in fixtures can be 20% of a job or 50% of a job. I think a more accurate measurement would be how many labor hours worth of work I can bid in a week, which is probably 2500-3000. Which I’m guessing is probably close to what you’re at.
Probably the most important thing you can do to judge how well you are bidding is to get feedback from GC’s about other EC bids whether you won or lost. If you’re work is anything like mine, it’s likely you’re bidding against the same EC’s on a lot of jobs. I always ask who else is bidding, and I try to keep my ear to the ground (suppliers) to gauge how busy my competitors are. If they’re also swamped like us, I know I’ll probably be competitive. If one of the bidders is slow, I know their bid is going to be low. I use that info sometimes to decide if I should bid a job. For example a couple of weeks ago I got an ITB on a local job; made some calls to see who else was bidding it, was told by an outside salesman that one of the EC’s bidding was out of work, so I gave that one up. I’m not greedy, we have plenty of work, and I knew he’d price it to get it.
Anyway, as for the feedback part, sometimes I’ll lose a job by 10%, but if I’m within 2-3% of everyone else that lost, I know I had a solid bid. The last four jobs I bid and won, one was 1%, the others were 3% and 5%.
Your company sounds like a pretty equal peer to me so if you ever want to talk about anything, hit me up, I’d be glad to chat.
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