ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Commercial Quote

Happi, be carefull as others have said, and in addition to that, never figure a demoed building is like new construction.

As far as estimating the project, you must have a complete scope of the work, specs, drawings, and special systems. Otherwise you are only coming up with a budget number. Make this clear to whoever is asking for you to speculate the project.

Take exception to any unclear items if you can not get answers before bid time. This doesn't relieve you of your responsibility of all contract documents, but will red flag items that you might need to ask for a change order for.

One bad job takes a long time to recover from.

Roger

[This message has been edited by Roger (edited 08-08-2002).]

Running the risk of repeating the previous posts': Unless this is a 24/7 mall they likely will require off hours. I did two mall stores last year and I had to bid for not only the off hours (11:00 pm/7:00 Am) but being a small company i had to compincate for lost time for the next day due to sleep time.As for comparing resedential qoutes to commercial quotes they are gennerally night and day.Commercial specs. are more precise; conduit size, wire size, circuit labeling, extra spare j/b's for future use exc. And they hold you to it.
It is nearly impossble to quote a commercial job, without specs. as opposed to a residential job were you atleast know
beforehand the material requirements.And as stated earlier, if you have to drill concrete make sure the x-raying has been done,the last thing you want to do is hit a stress cable.I have been there and done that...

Get an estimating program
And don’t forget to add all O&P
Oh yeah I am now 30 and been self employed for 4 years and I now carry Tums in the truck

Get an estimating program
And don’t forget to add all O&P
Oh yeah I am now 30 and been self employed for 4 years and I now carry Tums in the truck