The Huddle - Episode 39 - Estimating 101
This week on The Huddle Paul, Daniel, Jose are joined by Kathy Case from Quantify to cover the ins and outs of estimating. Kathy offers third-party estimating services and is well-versed in softwares to help your company. Spoiler alert . . . we all LOVE MEASURE SQUARE!
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The HUDDLE is where the flooring industry can get together and talk about everything! Lead by Paul Stuart from Go Carerra who is joined by Daniel and Jose Gonzalez from Preferred Flooring.
welcome to the Huddle uh join me this week uh we got a special episode but
joining you as always is Daniel with preferred flooring and I would say
always Jose but it's he's a little bit like me it's not always but he is the
best so uh and then we have Kathy case uh joining us today to discuss uh
estimating so maybe um you've got a small company or a big
company it really doesn't matter we use a lot of these core principles in our
business to make sure that we're checking the boxes you know kind of dot
in the eyes and crossing the t's a lot of you may or may not know that
estimating can be a service that you can um you know hire out to a third party
and I happen to know Kathy uh in this regard and I thought it'd be cool if she
came on and kind of uh gave us a few tips
um maybe it's software tips on which software she um thinks is the best uh for a beginner
um and then which one's kind of intermediate and so on uh and then also I'll just go over with uh me and Daniel
discussing you know some of the tricks of the trade so to speak
um and what you really want to do and what you do not so Kathy welcome
to the huddle appreciate it thanks for having me here would you mind telling us just a little
bit about yourself um where you when did you get into flooring that's
always a great question to ask somebody um I think we were still using stones
and chisels with tablets [Music] I started in 1979 uh legitimately I'm
Third Generation in the industry so I was on my first project at the age of six watching Terrazzo go in
um I grew up on the ceramic tile side of the business my grandfather having started the business in 1923 and
um in 1985 I went from running my first project in May to running 50 Union
installers by September when my dad passed away unexpectedly
and it it gave me a lot of Education I was fortunate to have a lot of people
step up and and help Mentor me and so for me at this point I tried to do the
same for others I've worked in the Ceramics tile industry as a beginning point but I've
also worked for flooring contractors as well having done everything from installing estimating project management
sales and executive Management in 2009 I
switched my focus to estimating after having been a member of the construction specifications Institute
during that time I found talking directly with spec writers that
it really wasn't their fault that the specs were so bad they weren't given the time to be able to do the research and
so I recognized the importance of the estimating role for a company and that's
why I switched to estimating after working for several prominent
flooring contractors in 2019 I opened up the service with the intention of being
an emergency resource so that when a company was overwhelmed with work or
they were short staffed that they'd have a resource so that they didn't miss the opportunity to serve their client
after three months into the business we started having people ask us for full-time estimators so we do offer
service either way that's a awesome story six years old watching
Terrazzo go in and then you fast forward to uh you know your your dad passing away
and you happen to take over the Helm of 50 Union installers that's that does speak volumes to the team you
had and um and then so when you decided to get into the estimating or kind of
you know Branch off into estimating as a service
you said that you were looking to just pick up some some uh downtime for
companies right time of need where what do you think is the biggest
change that had to happen for companies to feel comfortable using a third party
well I have to tell you the first thing is people feeling comfortable having estimating not done in the office and I
think covid was a huge turning point for that people were used to having everybody
right there they wanted their sales people and their support team their project managers to be able to walk
right up to an estimator and get their answers on the spot I will tell you when
I ran teams of estimators I did not allow that to happen it's one of the
greatest risks in making mistakes for an estimator to stop them in the middle of what they're doing and not have a really
cleanly defined stopping point to go back to once they've changed their focus
besides the fact that their mind is in that project and trying to switch into your project can take some time for that
mental focus to get back into what you're asking so that can be a challenge
in and of itself there's your first nugget guys don't interrupt the estimators when they're estimating
um that's a I happen to agree with you I know that some some offices are a little
louder our estimate are actually put on the noise canceling headphones because we're in an open Office setting and be
in the zone yeah he's got to get in the zone uh hey Daniel do you guys up there who
does your the main part of your estimating uh it depends on the contractor so
we all handle our our own contractors so if if I'm if we're getting bids
through the contractor that that I handle I'll do a majority of the estimating um as far as like the takeoffs and stuff
like that it's a team effort whoever doesn't have anything going at a particular time and
we've actually talked to Kathy about onboarding with her as well it's just we need to we need to
pull the trigger because she said one thing at uh at ties this last time that
I'll never forget because I you know I went up introduced and we're talking I was like man I hope that you know I hope
one day that we'd be able to afford you and she looked me in the eyes and she said you can't afford not to hire me I
said that's right like best takeaway from from that
right there and I was like I'm gonna I'm actually gonna use that for when people ask me to like oh you're you're
expensive I can't afford to hire you you can't afford not to hire me yeah I think it's the same mindset that we have you
know as installers is is is that really it's I'm the best at what I do you can
go ahead and keep on struggling or you can hire me right yeah
so when you guys um I'm gonna start from the beginning just
I know a lot of uh the audience is likely uh knows this part but obviously
most of it starts with some type of an invitation to bid um there's
even that first step for our systems and processes that you can use to help keep
yourself streamlined there's services like building connected we use just a
bid calendar in Excel for a long time and that works just fine as signing your
jobs and know who's working on what and management of all your bid invitations
uh as you get bigger uh we decided to actually have a
coordinator that does nothing but that that part manage the bid invites and assign estimators to uh to bid the job
or does it go to uh quantify with Kathy and have have a takeout perform there so
management of those is like that's step one when you start getting into uh
the actual set of drawings and specifications this seems uh Elementary
too but I would say that one of the biggest mistakes I've witnessed with
estimators is not starting with the product and the specification and really
knowing what you're going to get ready to take off I've watched many of them just open up a set of drawings go to the
finished schedule and start just going um so what's your thought on that
approach it seems to me um it leaves a lot of room for error
I'd agree with you with our team they're required to go through the full set of
documents and call out all the drawings all the the details the specifications
that are specific to the scope of work so that they're familiar with that information especially in the day of
electronic drawings it's not like the days of old when I started where you could just flip a page real quick I do
remember that time I used to manage it'll take Austin run into the blueprint company to pick up drawings that got
emailed to them from some GC we got it so much better now and it's
it's yeah it takes a long time I still know some people that would rather do it on paper and then it's like
the the amount of time you spend just learning software and the amount of time you save later on or like we say like
just hire someone out like hire cat and then it just save saves all that time
what was uh what was your comment on that Kathy
about just kind of jumping into a set of a finish schedule on a drawing and just going for the takeoff you were yeah I've
seen that happen as well and the tough thing is that you're not really aware of those details as much so it you can miss
something when you're rushing through to that point if you're doing a TI project it's carpetile and base and resilient
flooring it's not that big a deal but when you're talking about a school or a hospital or Assisted Living you really
want to know those details it's time consuming to have to go back and change things after you've already
done it one way and you actually see hopefully you're seeing those details at
some point in the review yeah but not always not all estimators go through the full set of drawings and that's
definitely a problem because too many companies are relying on the estimator to really know the documents
would you say it's really beneficial on a for a flooring project and let's say
it's a um it's a Remy model so you have a demo
set and you have your architectural drawings do you guys kind of follow uh
the the um the school of thought that all the architectural drawings apply or do you
only look at the things that are relevant to the flooring piece the tough thing is demo drawings often
have scope of work for the flooring contractor that you won't find in the architectural drawings something as
simple as the responsibility of the demo itself will be identified more likely in those demo drawings or the scope of work
for what's being demoed in the existing area you can't assume that everything is
being demoed and hopefully it's going to give you an idea of what the material is that's existing Now versus you know what
you're going to be dealing with for the new finishes it's key for understanding the installation process and the
materials that you're going to need to be able to install that finished product it would be awesome if Architects
actually put on there the existing material that's in the space all it usually says for us is match existing
match type of stuff they're doing a partial Renault
um that's where that information is typically they don't muddle up the floor
plan as much it's certainly in there I mean Architects are like you know children they have they all have their
own personality and how they approach things and how they present things
um and it's but in general it's a good idea to make sure you're reviewing your
demo drawings and the um almost the full battery of architectural
drawings at least get familiar with the things outside of your finished floor plan and your elevations uh that's
that's where when I first started estimating that's all I cared about where's the finished floor plan where's the elevation and then you figure out
quickly that finished floor plan has a different material than what's in the specifications and yeah so there's a
go ahead Kathy yeah I just wanted to point out that when it comes to ceramic tile you have to take it a step further
oftentimes you need to go to the structural plans or the plumbing plans structural if there's a recess for a mud
floor to know what the extent is and how deep that recess is and the plumbing
plans to understand what's happening in shower pans or any kind of gutters things like that so when it comes to
ceramic you have to take it the extra step yeah that's a good point there's there's a lot more information that you
have to figure out when it comes to you know mud setting uh showers and where
the plumbing yeah you know I've even found it helpful from uh
identifying the um the uh wall
mounted toilets those things are way harder to cut
around than a hole in a floor and so we started like really looking for those
because they can be a real pain you got to get the best way to do it is get a template from the plumber so that you
can mark it out but it's it's a it's kind of a pain compared to just cutting around a hole in a floor and so it's
even that kind of stuff you see on the plumbing drawings that you don't see uh the pattern of that uh wall mounted
toilet on it even a set of elevation sometimes so so we're always looking for the trench
plan people don't think that's a lot of prep
goes on them but takes a lot of prep yeah ceramic tile now is combining the actual
drains into the tile work as well and you also have those pre-form shower fans
that depending on where the the drain is located or what the type of the grain is the shower pan has a huge cost
difference yeah so that's another when you need to be looking at those Plumbing plans
yeah and so uh nugget number two is like really review the drawings try to know
what you're looking for um understand what products you're looking at uh just a few pitfalls I
remember when I sat at uh you know a drawing table all the time
with stuff like them calling out bullnose um on a series that doesn't make
bullnose and then uh I actually one time had to go pay to have it made
uh because I didn't bring it up and they didn't care that the that tile did not
come with a bullnose they asked for it and they knew that they can be made after market and that's what they made
me do so it's stuff like that where you can just cost yourself
um so being real detailed and getting to know there's a lot today's a lot better I mean we just kind of got I'd say 80
percent through an integration with measure square spec Intel and structure
which is our kind of software stack at Stewart Associates and so there's a lot
more tools today like spec and tell um that can really give you the information about that that flooring the
tile whatever it is so we got getting through the drawings
um you know and and really reviewing those what is um what's our next step and I know that
we could go for two hours on this but just so we stepped through the process of best practices here what's what would
our next step be in your one of your guys's Minds actually decide if the project is for
you um that's one of the biggest things like uh
you get so many that come across you know and it's like look at the print read the manual is
this project for me and you have to decide that and say no like um that I think that's one of the
big things is realize that when you do get you know a request for proposal that
there's an option there to say no and these companies are counting on you to either accept it or not so that way they
know if they need to find someone else yeah good nugget there is tell them though if they've sent you directly a
invitation to bed and you didn't find it all one of the bid boards online bid Boards out of respect and letting them
know that you're you do not plan on bidding the project uh that that's a good point too I didn't even think about
that I got to give you some props bro like you decide whether or not you want to bid it so let's assume we made that
decision we want to bid the project um what's the next what's your guys's next
kind of major step I think one of the things you need to do
if you've already gone through the drawings and looked at all the details is really understand those details and
see where the conflicts are I'm not saying if there's conflicts I'm saying where they are because they're gonna
exist no matter at what level and that's the time you want to try to get your questions going because there's usually
RFI deadlines and even if there aren't you want to give your customer the GC or
the end user the time to be able to do their research when you're seeing the conflicts I would suggest that as you're
proposing them you give enough information drawing details
um where you know if you're seeing a conflict between two different pieces of information you're listing both of those
pieces of information and provide a potential solution if you just go to
them with a problem in their mind they have to start at square one but if you've given them a potential solution
then they're starting to think about whether that solution is something that they agree with and it's easier for them
to process what they really want to do whether it's your choice or it's some
version or something totally different it just tends to will with an architect too
you do you definitely do but I it just speeds the process Along by proposing a
solution I I skipped over a piece how long before
bit date do you think your standard uh let's just call it your your
let's use something that I think a lot of people can relate to like a four-story Courtyard by Marriott don't
uh consider all the uh economies at scale that you get because
you probably bid a hundred of them but let's just say it's your first Courtyard it's a project I think people can image
in their head how long do you think now that we have this timeline for the
rfis you know because just to build on what Kathy said these rfis typically
it's seven days before bids when they're due some of it'll go to three and some
don't state but that means you got to be planning which is what I'm building on here is planning out your estimating
um but how long would you say Kathy I'd love your input to Daniel on a on say a
four story standard Courtyard by Marriott when should you start your uh
estimating process the sooner the better because it does
give you the time to ask the questions I mean ultimately when you're looking at
materials hopefully one of the other steps that you're doing in this process is reaching out to the manufacturer that
should be in the part that Daniel was talking about when you're making the decision whether or not to go ahead with
the project but you want to have an idea of how long it will take for you to get
the pricing back from the manufacturers they just about all the time now want quantities before they're going to give
you pricing so if it's going to be something that they can turn around in a few hours a few days you need to know that to be
planning your time appropriately from the pricing perspective
yeah I would agree that this the sooner the better right because uh
typically with the the bids that we've been getting your your timeline is not
very much so we get you know one or two weeks to do it and you gotta
figure that at least two of those days you're going to be waiting on reps right depends on what rep some of them answer
you right away some of them you have to bug them like two or three times two or three days in a row
and that that's the big thing what Kathy said is they want quantities so
sometimes you know when it's a a super fast track project like sometimes they'll email and say hey we didn't get
anyone to give us numbers for this will you just help us out real quick the bid is due tomorrow so I'll get right into
the emails with the Reps and saying this is the material this is the architect I don't have quantities yet as soon as I
get them I'll let you know I just need the price yeah I found with reps that if you can
get close so I do I'll use bluebeam
um and maybe Ashland can uh send post links
on our social for the for quantify and some of the um other uh softwares and services that
we use so but um I use bluebeam as a PDF reader and
measurer to get what I call Common Sense takeoff I'll take off an entire floor and then take off a
couple of the the bathrooms and then just do the the the the math just
obviously not as a full takeoff but just to give them close numbers if you're within a couple
hundred yards it's not going to make a big difference on your project but um I guess
without a a for sure time frame we've always tried to use eight days on like
a 45 50 60 000 foot project
um day one get in get your of at least alert your reps that you're
going to be needing pricing and some of them will send it to you actually without quantities and and but shoot a
quick email you know we getting ready I think pretty late in the in the game
here seven eight days before the bid is due um gives a couple of days to get pricing
and your rfis can be running at the same time but then you still need to build out your spreadsheet or whatever method
you're using to assemble the numbers which we'll get to next um and then type up professional
proposal and then make sure you have all of the bidding General Contractors or
are you bidding this direct to an owner uh are you bidding it to see them at risk uh what kind of project is it and
that's another value of knowing the the specs early on and getting in there uh
we've had one of our estimators send a bid out to a bunch of GC these that were
actually bidding portions of the job to a much larger GC on a huge project
and thought that all the GCS these three GCS were bidding it when in fact they
were doing like the interior package of the entire building and then this GC was doing all the flat work and still
erection and so it can help you uh get your head wrapped around who you're sending your bid to and make sure you
are um so I I say eight days but that's probably because that's just how we do
it that's a good time frame again thinking of all the parts and pieces that go into
the process because you do have a couple some period of time to analyze the
documents to determine if it is a good opportunity to make your connections then you're going to need a day or two
at least on the estimating side then going ahead and getting your pricing
putting it together if there's any kind of breakouts required God forbid there's
an addendum or some information that's provided or 14 alternates
yes exactly so that that is definitely time consuming as a general rule you
should be allowing yourself at least two to three days to review the estimate put the proposal together and get it out the
door and that's without it being a public job where it's a public bid opening yeah you never want those to be
the last minute because you run the risk I've seen too many times when somebody walked in a minute past closing time and
they missed the opportunity to bid the job even when they're due online like we uh submitted ones who the uh
one of the colleges over here and it says everything has to be submitted online and I went on
there you know two hours early and I keep on trying to submit and it's like just not not doing anything and then by
the time it finally loaded through it was like 10 minutes past and it I was I
was like now what did it go through
um I was able to get a hold of the guy and let him know kind of what was going on while it was happening so he still
let us go through gotcha yeah well that's why I wasn't on the bid uh or on
the Huddle last week or I was on for a short time I should say the week before uh yeah last week
you were on a plane last week I was in the air flying uh from Memphis so uh but
the week before we had let a job slip through the deal uh and this is why
this this is why it's so important and we really drove this home with our
estimator to read your specs and your drawings ahead of time is a
if it's a if it's a public opening the location and the directions on how you
are to submit that bid is all in the specifications number one number two
that's also where you find all your alternates and you know if you have four
or five alternates on a job it's going to be in the specs in section zero one hundred typically
and if you have four or five different ways that they want this bathroom as an
alternate but without the tile in the shower they want a fabricate a chair but then they want another alternate for
just the shower and then you know when you start partnering and piecing this thing together it helps you to do your
take off the way that you're going to have to bid the job so I think all that's important
and we get the job downloaded loaded up
eight days go by Ish we we got our bid back whether we uh Outsource the takeoff
or not we put our bid together um what are some important items that every
bit form should have Daniel I'll let you start because you're
still in the flooring uh bid you know business Kathy does mainly the
estimating at this point but I do want your take on that exclusions you need to let them know
like right up front like inclusions and exclusions because this is what it's included if it's not listed
it's not included this is what's excluded and
we have been into that where we do this and all
they do is look at the number and say yes or no and then once they say yes then you're you're starting to go
through stuff and they're like well when are you going to be here to do this and be like we're not going to do that that's excluded like
I'm not and and that's yeah if you snuck it in your contract that's a problem though
right and that that's where once we you do get to the contract part
read the read everything so that way like um we're doing a job that
it's almost going to the next phase right now but when uh when we we want it and then he started
asking questions and I'm like uh he's like who told you to spec a new
carpet I said you guys did it's it's right there on the bid form even like
it's in the spec it's in the bid form and it and it read like the alternate was to spec a new carpet
for the installation on the entire building instead of just the renovation phase
and he was like I don't understand where you've got just like a new carpet from I said read it again and then you decide
where I got to to spec a new carpet so I guess that that's one of the big
things is if you do read something like that there's no dumb questions right and I
I will drive that like you can you can think of one thing but until you ask them what they meant by it it's all up
to interpretation yeah I think that's a good point be willing to ask the questions
so I I agree that the exclusions and exclusions uh inclusions exclusions are
like the mo one of the most important things I think a properly laid out bid
telling them what you're bidding uh are you bidding per plans and specifications
and then you don't list all your materials you just that when a job has heavy specified
products so it's not on a maybe it's on a finished schedule still but it's it's in the spec book and they've taken the
time to really about every product in the spec book then I'll bid per plans
and specifications and then my exclusions matter right because then they can know when this spec section
oh nine three thousand and that's full volatile
and I exclude you know waterproofing on the first floor or uh you know something
whatever it is and the the real important part is that they have a spec to go see why where
it's excluded from uh when you're just listing your materials and say you've
got Daltile this Daltile that whatever the products are and you're actually listing out products uh and that's a way
to do it as well but you got to be a little more careful with your exclusions I think and that is we added a box on
our bid form that says job specific exclusions and then our standardized these are our exclusions on every job so
and then of course the price who are you addressing it to are you addressing it to all bidding general
contractors are you addressing to the estimating Department I would encourage you as long as you don't have eight or
ten different GCS if you got two or three personalizing hey it's this guy
you know it's Daniel Gonzalez that Brady done and so a little personalization is
is uh uh can go a long way as well but the
main thing is obviously the price and scope and then the uh inclusions exclusions what about you Kathy do you
have any other like add-ons to that that we need to be careful for well first and foremost I want to
comment on your personalizing because I think that is important even if you have eight or ten bidders if two or three of
them are people that you work with regularly make it personal make it addressed directly to them
because they want to feel important quite honestly so I would personalize it
um when it comes to the exclusions and inclusions you want to be real careful to include how you've handled any
conflicts in the drawings if it's not been addressed in an addendum that
becomes part of your contract drawings you can't assume just because you had a conversation with your client that he's
going to remember at the time of award that that's how you had agreed to handle that situation
not only do you want it in there and clearly identified why you have that
um how you've come to that conflict resolution but when you're before you sign the contract you want to be sitting
down with them and making sure that you've reviewed those conflicts and that everybody's in agreement with the way
that you've addressed it so that you're getting that resolved before you're on the job site before it becomes you know
potentially an ugly situation about the cost and who's going to bear that
that's a good point because you don't always get your rfis answered I mean frankly
um particularly if it's coming close to the uh you know end of the bid uh date
but I I know some Architects that just don't answer Subs rfis they make us send
it through uh one of the general contractors and then that general contractor flooring we're the last thing on maybe
not the last name but we're one of the latter things on their mind when they're building a facility and so we send in an
RFI that has to go through the GC because an architect's somewhat of a pompous then you know you may not get
the answer so you have to learn to make intelligent assumptions and then detail
out what that assumption is would you agree that that's kind of what what the
best method is when you when you don't get an answer to your question absolutely and again even if you get an
answer from your client but it's a verbal answer or even an email you want to make sure that you're including it
the only time that I feel it may not be necessary is at least if it's documented
in an addendum or an RFI response yeah you want to protect yourself and you need it for your own reminder as well
because you're going through how many projects not only bidding but like Construction
side as well so you need that kind of Tickler to remind yourself when you're getting back into that project that
those items need to be resolved yeah I even put on ours you know that it includes this addendum dated this day so
that way they don't have to come back and ask me hey Does it include this hey Does it include that yes it does include
this and it's already listed in there yeah last year addendums list your uh if
you've got a lot of alternates and only five of them apply to you I would encourage you to say you got 10 and 5
apply to you I've list all 10 and no change on the ones that don't affect you and then that saved us before because we
thought we didn't have anything on this uh alternate but in fact we did and
um you know it was helpful that the GC scene that we didn't have a number in on
that it just kind of laid it out if you got a couple alternates just obviously making sure that we we log our
alternates and and the pricing for that and then like Daniel just said make sure they you recognize the addendums
and then even in the project manual sometimes you'll run into you know the job specific bid forms and you have to
use that bid form they don't want anything else and that's where uh you know that they're going to be a huge
stick around price I've been finding out because they want that bit form they want the number
any alternates that's it they don't care about anything else they just want to see that number
yeah well those are dangerous and I just I always send our qualification sheet
with it even if it's their bid form and I'm like I've written it on the bottom of the bit form that our our uh
um uh our explanation sheet must be considered with this number or else to
just throw our away I mean there's too many there's too many things too
many ways to get caught on that bill and if you're some of this is like as you build a
relationship with your GCS uh and you have a good solid relationship with someone they're going to call you and
discuss things I had a call last week on a bid for one of my estimators you know they'll call you and let you know you're
kind of something's wacky or you know did you look at it this way did you look
at that um so that's part of you know the final thing is
personalizing that bid form is for what to build a relationship because like Kathy said they want to feel important
we all do and a lot of estimators are just sitting behind a computer screen for eight ten hours a day guys so like
Donald love and so personalize it but that's to build a relationship that's one of the
things that does it's you're recognizing that other human and that can come really in handy from a perspective from
the perspective of if you did mess something up they'll call you you know I I had a job that we're not sure until we
get through whether I was right or they're the uh the competitor was right but we had
all our opposite bids from a price perspective and there was only two bidders it's kind of the worst scenario
for me I was low by like 20 something percent low and they were high and I'm like okay which
one of us made the mistake here they called me I looked at mine and went over
with the estimators uh I feel really confident that it's fine and that we had
everything covered but at the end of the day those relationships that you built by acknowledging other people can come
in handy and really save your rear end yeah I've had those calls too where
they they call and they they like working with you because you do build that you know that that bond with these
people and they call you and they're like hey I just want to let you know that
right now you know you're not you're not the lowest you're you're you know little
you're kind of right in the middle and I'm not telling you that you need to lower your price on anything I just want
to let you take a look at everything to see if there was something that you added that shouldn't be there
yeah so relationships 100 matter yeah you'll get those calls um you know
I would you know say be very careful I want to be clear
what bid rigging is and what that is actually and a contractor Colleen or just talking
to on a on a normal project talking to a sub about the job if they're not sharing
you know specific numbers or something the key that's not bit rigging by
calling your client or your uh your flooring vendor for example and saying
hey can you re-look at this the fact is is that they know you're going to do the job right and when GCS do that it's
typically because they want to deliver the best value for their client they don't want all the headaches and the
being sure or the you know the things that happen when you when they have to deal with another uh provider so at the
end of the day that that's not been rigging uh I would say it's very much frowned upon in the industry but it's
not an illegal activity now if Daniel and I got together and we're bidding the same GC and him and I
said Hey listen 60 profit baby
and we went in and we were we knew we were the only two bidders and we both
did it way up there like that's bittering that is illegal and will land
your ass in jail and we know I know of a of a very large company in Chicago that this it's pretty
well known uh but this happened to and I believe it was their VP that went he did
some time yeah and like I said he didn't tell me any dollar amounts you know he's just
like is there anything that you could have had in there that shouldn't be in there like you you added something twice or
something just and he just you know they that the big
thing was I love working with you guys I would love to see you on this project but ultimately it's not my decision but
if you could see people added anything in there second look
yeah well you get those opportunities to to uh you know work with your contractor but I just wanted to be clear because
I've heard people say that like well that's bid reading it's not uh and it's
not illegal that activity like I said it's pretty frowned upon or it can be frowned upon but the dirty secret is
every flooring company I've ever talked to it happens I was at a conference with
a hundred and I don't know what are we up to 160 contractors at that place there was a certain discussion where it
was all talked about well yeah the contractor calls me and wants me lowering my price and you know get
closer to the low guy um so what I would say though is building
the relationship can come in handy the the example I was giving was
like I because there was only two bidders right with this guy Bennett High or if I miss
something you know and they don't have a third or a four to be like okay these are grouped together and this guy's way
low so he's probably the outlier it was just two of us and we both had pretty good reputations I see pretty good on
their side our reputation's awesome but uh the
so they called to give me a chance to look at it before they you know put me in as the low bid and that you
know can save your bacon sometimes um and that that's one thing too is you know once you do
find out that you don't win something definitely ask them well how much was I
off by and sometimes they'll give you a percent sometimes they'll give you a dollar amount and you're like man you can take
that percentage and be like man I was only you know three percent off and I lost this bid and yeah you can find some
ways to tweak it yeah that gives you a chance to re-look at that project and be like what could I have done differently
and still been profitable but got this job and that's really the the biggest
thing that we've been dealing with lately is learning from the projects that we've been that we didn't get
to go forward and still maintain you know the profit that we need in order to
run but getting it getting the projects that we want and maybe the Holy Grail of estimating
is don't do free like do not do work that you think you're going to lose
money on or that it's so tight if you have a project that has
seven alternates and there's 12 gc's bidding and it's some big you know
project that is like a Mainstay in your area like a new library or you know a new college dorm or something that would
get accolades and there's all these walk away sometimes it's just best to walk
away when you got all these alternates which tells you the owner wants to see
it 15 different ways right uh owner or architect and then your G you got eight
or ten gc's that's telling you right there they want the Autumn dollar price you unless you
most likely mess something up to be low you're not going to get the job anyway so I think that plays into it as well
early on get in and out of the projects if you can't do them when it comes to public bids you know
look you get a one shot at the price and I'll tell you when I was on the
Contracting side one of my favorite projects I knew one of my competitors wanted that job it was in his hometown
he didn't want somebody else on that job it was for my favorite client they considered me their favorite tile
contractor and so when it came time we we put a price on it as a convenience to
them because they want to show their customer that they have plenty of
participation in the bid and so I put the right price on the job I did not try
to be tight on my number and what ended up happening was we were third low bidder
the first bidder which was the person I knew was going to be aggressive missed the entire lower level of the school
which was locker rooms swimming pool decks and so he got cost the second low
bidder missed seven thousand feet of epoxy grout so he got tossed what
started out as a 290 000 bid ended up being almost seven hundred thousand
dollars and I was third low the point being is that being the low
number does not necessarily gain you the bid in a public situation because a good
contractor is going to qualify the scope of work that you have you want to make sure that you've covered the job
properly and priced it properly and then go in with the right number yeah lowest
qualified right and they'll tell you because we've talked about her too because on the
public jobs you're putting in a bid Bond and then if it's over a certain dollar amount you got to do the performance
bond and stuff like that and it's the and we've talked to them they're like
we typically don't use the bid Bond because we'll just toss them out and be like yeah you're done with this one he
said but in certain cases when we need to we'll definitely use that money yeah
I've never had one uh used but um because I don't pull out of bids I'm
you know frankly I've I've we've made mistakes and I've done a loser job before uh just to maintain the the
relationship um while we're we're closing in on an
hour already guys I got a question um with you know what we've we've talked about
the importance of building the relationship at the end of the project what is your best comeback when they say
oh we can't tell you that when you ask for uh where you landed
that's kind of a silly question but I'm just curious because I got my go-to
do you have good I don't know they usually just tell me you don't have gc's to say oh I can't tell you that no
so we we will they'll be like well we can't share that with you and I'm like okay so you're saying
you cannot share with me where my competitor landed are you in a you were in an opening with
all your competitors and you've got to hear all of theirs uh
we are only trying to get better that's where I lead to it's like we're only trying to get better I'm not I've lost
this job if I've lost this job that's got nothing to do with it we are just trying to increase our performance from
a getting jobs or bids in on time and providing you with accurate numbers
that's all so any real guidance that can help us become a better uh you know bid
resource for you because see just like you alluded to Kathy the G sees a lot of their
reputation when if they're bidding to a owner is how many Subs can can they get
those three Subs to come and give them three numbers on each scope and you know
the owners they recognize that stuff if a if a GC Can't Get Enough Subs to even get two or three bids they know that you
know there's possibly uh some skeletons in the closet with that GC
um so yeah I guess at the at the end of the day that's what I tell them
I've asked them in the past if they give that roadblock is to at least give me an
idea and my two percent five percent ten percent twenty percent and oftentimes they'll at least give you a ballpark
they may not give you the exact number but similar to what you said you know I
explained to them that I'm trying to serve them and if my number is not working for them then
you know I need to know what I have to do to be effective for them I always make it about them when you make it
about that you don't make it about yourself you have a better shot at getting the answers
yeah good insight well uh so we went from
start of getting a bit invitation and I know we didn't do any screen shares on
actual takeoffs uh but I would like to discuss for the last couple of minutes here
the best software stacks for estimating takeoff PDF readers that kind of thing
what are your favorites Kathy because you do this with multiple different companies so wait a second if you cannot
answer this do not worry about it I will answer my I just realized the position I
just put you in I'm sorry I into it all the time because I've been asked when I was doing speeches at conferences so you
know I will tell you who it is and why it is there's great software out there
and everybody's going to have their own ideas as to what is important to them
but for me measure square has become my absolute favorite go-to as well as all
of my estimators because we've experienced no glitches in their system
and more importantly they're there to serve the industry if you can see a
potential Improvement in their software they're going to hear you out and they're going to consider it and more
than likely either they're either they'll adopt it or adapt it one of the two that's really important the industry
is forever changing software's are changing products are changing and so if
you've got a software company that's going to work with you to try and make their product better to serve you better
that's that's key that's huge yeah that's awesome I would say the same thing with measure
square we've we've used some others in the past but measure squares our favorite us too that's what we switched over I
think two or three years ago from a different program and not only is it more user friendly
but like Kathy said it's if you have an idea they will absolutely hear you out I
mean my brother's been on webinars with them constantly like this is my idea
this will make my life easier how can we get it into your system and it's
they're they're all about it they're like you said they're they're here to serve us right and they really show it
yeah brother breeders
um or anything like that Kathy I don't I didn't know if I mean not just for reading documents but we use bluebeam
it's kind of a you can do some takeoffs with it I I do it to check estimator
sometimes or whatever but you can Mark I like it because I can mark up the drawings and put notes and Cloud stuff
out and I can cut stuff away and I can make the drawing what I need to make it
because I'm always thinking about okay what is the installer gonna think when he sees this that's just how I build
things so you can actually cloud and make notes all over measure square as well so there
isn't that limitation we don't typically use bluebeam um not at least for flooring we've
started doing drywall painting and ceilings and in those we may apply it
more because we're not typically using measure square at this time a measure square is now developing in a way to be
able to be used for those other trades but we haven't the teams are not quite up to par on measure square yet for
those trades gotcha what about you Daniel yeah typically we're doing measure
square as well like that's where you make all your markups and stuff yep so
they have a notes option and then we'll like draw arrows to the we'll draw an arrow and put a note out so that way
people know exactly what we're talking about yeah so uh our estimators will do that
kind of thing but when I as a if I'm project managing in it managing the job
I don't just I don't have I don't even have a measure square login myself so I
get the documents from the estimating uh the estimators and you know they're in
PDF form uh or a measure square file well if I don't have measure square I'm not going to be able to look at it there
so right in the PDF form and then I use bluebeam because it can do all those
markups and stuff uh it's a lot better than like an adobe or something like that although you can probably get a
really high end of adobe to work for you but is uh is that software does that
software have a cost to it moving yeah it's like I had to remember
it's like 300 bucks a year or something it's not like not too bad but yeah so going from PDFs
like that when we're out on the field we do have um the
measure square mobile as well so we can pull it up on there but if we
don't have if we don't want to do that and just doing a screenshot and marking it up with our phones is what we do
gotcha well it was a pleasure we're gonna have to wind this thing down to stand or an
hour it was a pleasure of chatting with both of you about this and getting into the weeds a bit about how estimating uh
you know there is a way to do it it's not the only way but there are some best practices so I hope that we shared
enough with you guys so that you know what those best practices are as always if you have any questions for me you can
reach out at Paula go Carrera uh Daniel yours is shoot your email again because
Daniel will do just the easy one Daniel at pfmi dot team
awesome and Kathy if somebody wanted to reach out to you for a service or maybe have you bid a few jobs for them and
they're you know they're really busy or something what's the best way for them to reach out to you my phone number which is
203-627-0067 or my email which is K case at quantifyna.com
and uh Kathy with the k athy with a K that's great so
um all right well if you guys like the the content that
you got I would encourage you please help us out give us a like you know a thumbs up whatever you're watching this
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every Tuesday at three o'clock Central Kathy thank you again for joining us it
was a real pleasure to talk through that with you Daniel tell your brother to get better my friend yeah
yeah I'm I'm gonna go to bed all right everyone
all right see you next week and Kathy again thank you for joining us I'll see you in a week awesome see ya
bye