If you have to ask how to estimate, you shouldn’t be in business

If you have to ask the question, how do I estimate, you shouldn’t be in the contracting or plumbing business.  If you want to learn how to estimate, my response to that is that you should have gathered enough experience by now working for other contractors.  If neither applies, I suggest purchasing books about the trade.  Hopefully you will get enough information that will help you.

For me, it may take fifteen minutes or fifteen hours to give a proper estimate. It’s hard to go into detail about all the little things you need to know. For someone like me who is in general contracting and plumbing, doing home repairs, replacing windows, or pouring concrete, may be a little easier for you to figure out mathematically.  Add up the cost of your materials and the time that you will need to complete the job, and use this information to bid the next jobs. After about four or five estimates, you will be able to develop an average price, or at least get a better idea of what you should be charging for your jobs.

If you are searching for answers to this question, it tells me that you do not have enough experience in the plumbing and contracting business, and probably shouldn’t be estimating.  You are taking a big risk estimating without knowing what you are doing.  It’s just like rolling the dice, not knowing what number you will land on.

With that said, read some books, get as many as you can. These books that are twenty dollars may have five thousand dollars worth of knowledge in them. The second thing is experience; If you are working with someone, see if you can go to a couple jobs with them to better understand the process.  They might not be willing to teach. If that is the case, than gather as much information from the books as you can.

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Don’t give fast quotes

Be careful about giving fast quotes. Unless you have so much profit in the jobs that you do that you can afford it, estimating by square footage is a big mistake. If you are going to someone’s home to look at a large project such as, a kitchen remodel, bathroom remodel, room addition – something that’s larger and has a lot of variables that will affect the pricing – don’t just shoot off a number to your customer right then and there. It gives off a very false sense.  If someone gives me a nice round number bid of $5000 just like that – I know immediately that they do not know what their talking about.

This is most of the time. If I have a plumber come over and I say how much is it to repair that hose bib, and he tells me $295 -- this is something I would expect from a plumber. It’s a simple job, they should be able to give me a price immediately.  Something that would involve pouring concrete, digging trenches, running new plumbing pipes, or framing a building, it doesn’t make sense to. You can’t just rattle off a price unless you were completely making it up.

This is not a good way to conduct business.  It looks better to tell your customers that you need time to look at the plans, figure it out, and wrap your mind around it. Even if you are not going to spend too much time on their project, it still looks better to give them a price for a larger job a few days later.  It will give them the impression that you do know what you are doing.  You are not going to be lying to them, it may seem deceptive, but you’re not going to be lying because you did spend some time on it. You took it home, opened it up, wrote a number down and shut.

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