Hi Jim,
You say you've worked in the trade for 25 years but not what branch the majority of your experience is in.
If you've done a lot of residential both new and remodel then on any given project you should have a pretty good idea of both what challenges your likely to run into and how many man-hours it could end up taking in a worst case scenario.
If you were running jobs and were responsible for ordering the material for most of those 25 years then you should also have a good idea of what you would need to buy to get a given job done.
If you know these your not guessing, your applying your experience.
Simply put,the number you give should equal the sum of:
Materials
Labor
Overhead
Profit
You need to know what every man-hour of labor costs you.
If you have employees, how much does it really cost you after paying comp, benefits, bonuses, etc. to send your crew out for an hour?
If you work in the field, or it's just you, how much do want to pay yourself? You should be able to pay yourself more than an employee for bidding purposes due to not needing comp on yourself.
Next you would need to get current pricing from your wholesalers on all the materials you'll be buying for your project. These numbers can vary from wholesaler to wholesaler and can also change considerably with the rise and fall of the commodities market so check them often. It's important get a locked in quote from your suppliers and to write into your contract the ability to adjust for market price fluctuations should your client wait three or six months to accept your bid.
If your getting good pricing you should be able to markup your material a bit. 15% is not uncommon.
You also need to figure your overhead. It's the cost of all of your operating expenses over the time period of that job. License, bonds, insurance, office costs, equipment costs and maintenance, vehicle costs and maintenance, gas and travel costs and anything else that you'll pay for to get the job done that isn't the material and labor that becomes your finished product.
Lastly you need to figure the profit your company is to make on this project. This is above and beyond what you pay yourself hourly for working in the field. If your fairly accurate in estimating the other costs you should be able to get away with 8% - 10% and still get jobs.
Add it all up and then stare at your numbers and worry yourself sick for a while:)
Keep in mind who you will be bidding against and what their labor and overhead costs are likely to be. If you're a one man shop you should be able to give competitive bids and make good money due to lower overhead and the ability to adjust the profit number a bit if necessary.
Your goal is to get enough work. If one gets away because you were too high that just serves to let you know where you were at relative to your competition. You would rather have that than do everything too low.
Good Luck!
