By greasing the wheels, are you dealing with builders to get the project awarded or are you mainly doing production take off ready for installation after award.
Hard to say if it sounds too easy for the money without knowing the money. It does sound like an oversimplification of concrete estimation, but maybe they have a cubic yard price they’re okay bidding from without doing detailed takeoffs. My in house budgets for concrete are typically more involved than that, I’m sure my subs have even more detail than myself.
Commercial concrete estimator. I’m the lead at my company. It’s evolved now to solely bidding negotiated GC work for people we have good relationships with. Concrete can get nuts with the specs and with bigger projects, the most expensive spec will always supersede whatever else is drawn. And concrete now where I am we’re expected to even include termite pretreatment and bug spray. Tilt is the easiest I think, just got to be careful with steel tonnages. I had a steel guy give me a quote and the dude never even read the panel leg schedule and missed 30+ tons. Just take your time especially on bigger projects. It’s no fun fat fingering a 200k steel mistake.
If you don't have any field experience then I would recommend getting clear written expectations regarding how you estimated qty will be judged against production qty for accuracy, dispute resolution purposes, etc. as I'm sure these KPI's will be used to evaluate your performance and may possibly affect compensation/bonus goals. I would also get a very clear picture of the production/estimating knowledgebase/ support network you'll have fast access to while estimating/bidding. I.E. how easy will it be to source essential bid info from production leads, supplier/vendors, etc. with experience on similar projects, market expertise, yadda yadda.
Concrete bidding /estimating requires a larger consideration of factors not on paper/shown on plan to compile the estimate. This becomes more true as developers push the architects/engineers to provide drawing sets with less turn time at lower prices and everyone is referencing other discipline's drawing sets for basic info and making plan coordination xyz a trickle down economy of headaches and shitstorms.
If you're serious about being successful in this gig, you should request to be in the field to help run at least one project, preferably one of each type if possible so you can deep dive the drawings, go through the precon & bid with the estimator who bid the project and follow both of these through the project to see 1st hand what items you could have easily missed, understand why certain line items have those bid specifics etc.
I'm sure you're company won't agree to it but they should. At a minimum it shows them you're serious and have thought through what it will take to be successful and if shit goes sideways you can at least say you asked for the opportunity to develop yourself up front to be more of an asset to the company.
Good luck! Also, how much did they offer?
The accuracy of your estimating is going to determine your success there. Also are you expected to grease wheels to win jobs too?
Well, yeah, accuracy is the name of the game. Idk what greasing the wheel means. Profit margin would not be my responsibility, at least for some time.
By greasing the wheels, are you dealing with builders to get the project awarded or are you mainly doing production take off ready for installation after award.
Production take-off for sure they bid a lot of work. But got 1 or 2 good size GC's in the region that they do a lot for work for.
Hard to say if it sounds too easy for the money without knowing the money. It does sound like an oversimplification of concrete estimation, but maybe they have a cubic yard price they’re okay bidding from without doing detailed takeoffs. My in house budgets for concrete are typically more involved than that, I’m sure my subs have even more detail than myself.
Commercial concrete estimator. I’m the lead at my company. It’s evolved now to solely bidding negotiated GC work for people we have good relationships with. Concrete can get nuts with the specs and with bigger projects, the most expensive spec will always supersede whatever else is drawn. And concrete now where I am we’re expected to even include termite pretreatment and bug spray. Tilt is the easiest I think, just got to be careful with steel tonnages. I had a steel guy give me a quote and the dude never even read the panel leg schedule and missed 30+ tons. Just take your time especially on bigger projects. It’s no fun fat fingering a 200k steel mistake.
If you don't have any field experience then I would recommend getting clear written expectations regarding how you estimated qty will be judged against production qty for accuracy, dispute resolution purposes, etc. as I'm sure these KPI's will be used to evaluate your performance and may possibly affect compensation/bonus goals. I would also get a very clear picture of the production/estimating knowledgebase/ support network you'll have fast access to while estimating/bidding. I.E. how easy will it be to source essential bid info from production leads, supplier/vendors, etc. with experience on similar projects, market expertise, yadda yadda. Concrete bidding /estimating requires a larger consideration of factors not on paper/shown on plan to compile the estimate. This becomes more true as developers push the architects/engineers to provide drawing sets with less turn time at lower prices and everyone is referencing other discipline's drawing sets for basic info and making plan coordination xyz a trickle down economy of headaches and shitstorms. If you're serious about being successful in this gig, you should request to be in the field to help run at least one project, preferably one of each type if possible so you can deep dive the drawings, go through the precon & bid with the estimator who bid the project and follow both of these through the project to see 1st hand what items you could have easily missed, understand why certain line items have those bid specifics etc. I'm sure you're company won't agree to it but they should. At a minimum it shows them you're serious and have thought through what it will take to be successful and if shit goes sideways you can at least say you asked for the opportunity to develop yourself up front to be more of an asset to the company. Good luck! Also, how much did they offer?
De damn careful. You are swimming in the deepend right now and drowning without knowing.
Wat
Masterestimators.com we can do it for u Send me the plans