With all due respect I love bidding against guys like you.
Double the profit you put in your estimates and you will never get another job. Knowing when to add 30% and you can make some money.
An estimate is nothing more than a good guess, all money is made and lost through project management and bid strategy. Granted if you leave enough out of you take-off you will loser your ass, but sometimes you have leave something off your bid to get the job in the first place. If you go in knowing it is a losing job, you can make it work, and make money with aggressive project managing, but this has to be balanced with the market knowing when to raise your prices.
This is a subtle thing I know, but knowing your market is the most important part of this business. Knowing when to buy copper, and when not to, when to put out fat bids and when to cut them to the bone. When you competitors are all working their asses off, and GCs are coming out of no-where begging you for a number, then you can charge a lot more, but when you are chasing work and doing the begging you have to be a lot more competitive. The times when you are doing the fat jobs, helps you get through he times when you do work with slim profits, or when you get screwed on copper prices, or when the unexpected happens. You also need to know when to walk away, there are some GCs I wont bid.
Combine this bid strategy with doing multiple size jobs, like a 1 or 2 really big ones and a few medium jobs, and then multiple fat small ones and you can cash flow quite nicely as you pick which jobs you want.
BTW if you are not making 10% on your 100K jobs, you either need to charge more, PM more aggressively or go back to doing service work. The money is there for the right bid, the right job, and the right project manager.
[This message has been edited by ITO (edited 12-05-2006).]
