It seems that the multitude of contributors to the cabling forum price there project based on a per drop price. Usually in the $100 to $150 a single drop for Cat5e plenum. I am guessing this is for around a 150’ run in a typical office environment.
I am wondering what higher level metrics you use when bidding a very competitive large cable project over 1000 drops. In these cases I build the labor and materials separately and use a per foot labor calculator for the runs. I also check to see how many cables are going to be following the same path for time efficiencies.
Does anyone else out there use these methods and what your per foot rates are? Also if you simply use a different rate for duals, triples, quads, etc. Or if you use an add cable multiplier?
Here are some of the numbers I have used for the simple act of pulling the cable whether it is Cat5e or Cat6. This does not include: termination time at each end, dressing cables at head-end, labeling, or testing. Those are all static factors that can easily be added on to the overall labor per cable.
Single = .0056 per foot
Dual = .0095 per foot
Triple = .0128 per foot
Quad = .0175 per foot
Do you add any additional time for cube furniture?
The last topic that does not make sense in the cable estimation world is using per outlet metrics when determining the amount of labor time. There isn’t a cable technician out there that is going to make 10 separate dual runs to a group of 10 cubes needing 2 cables each. That tech is going to find 10 boxes of cables and make 2 runs of 10 cables. If the tech could find 20 boxes they would pull all the cables at once. There are time efficiencies in this and it seems that as estimators we are not properly capturing this in the bids.
Thanks in advance for everyone’s input.
I am wondering what higher level metrics you use when bidding a very competitive large cable project over 1000 drops. In these cases I build the labor and materials separately and use a per foot labor calculator for the runs. I also check to see how many cables are going to be following the same path for time efficiencies.
Does anyone else out there use these methods and what your per foot rates are? Also if you simply use a different rate for duals, triples, quads, etc. Or if you use an add cable multiplier?
Here are some of the numbers I have used for the simple act of pulling the cable whether it is Cat5e or Cat6. This does not include: termination time at each end, dressing cables at head-end, labeling, or testing. Those are all static factors that can easily be added on to the overall labor per cable.
Single = .0056 per foot
Dual = .0095 per foot
Triple = .0128 per foot
Quad = .0175 per foot
Do you add any additional time for cube furniture?
The last topic that does not make sense in the cable estimation world is using per outlet metrics when determining the amount of labor time. There isn’t a cable technician out there that is going to make 10 separate dual runs to a group of 10 cubes needing 2 cables each. That tech is going to find 10 boxes of cables and make 2 runs of 10 cables. If the tech could find 20 boxes they would pull all the cables at once. There are time efficiencies in this and it seems that as estimators we are not properly capturing this in the bids.
Thanks in advance for everyone’s input.