How to quote cabling an office? 1

[brmale]

I was wondering, what formula does everyone use to quote a cabling project? Do you do it per drop? or do you do labor and equipment seperate? Another question: For large project's do you guys require a up-front payment(to cover your initial equipment costs)? One more: For small projects, do you quote per drop or do you do quote labor and equipment?

Thanks for your help!

-Brent

 

[daronwilson]

One common guess method is to figure the price of the materials and double it. It's rough, but gets you pretty close. If it's a small project or if they havent decided how many drops but they need a number to work from, I often quote on a per drop basis, but I quote a bit high to cover myself. Bigger jobs where I have to bid more competitively I detail the materials out and the man hours per item to install on a spreadsheet and let it total the work for me.

Good Luck! It is only my opinion, based on my experience and education...I am always willing to learn, educate me!
Daron J. Wilson, RCDD
daron.wilson@lhmorris.com

 

[rbertram]

Doubling the cost of materials seems cheap to me. Next time maybe I will have you do the work for me. Or is that only for materials and you charge labor by the hour.

There are a lot of things to consider.
New construction vs. existing
Access for wiring (drop ceilings, insulation, interior vs. exterior walls) etc.

You could charge per drop, but you should put a limit on the anmount of time it includes. You never know when that unforseen obstacle is going to bite you.

You just have to look at what you have to work with and use your best judgement on how much time and materials it is going to take.

 

[shipwright]

On a per drop basis you might not make a big profit on the difficult runs but you have to see if the easier ones will make up for it,"tit for tat".Most customers like a per drop quote as they know how much it will cost and when they ask for the extras (which they will surely do or if they don't you will suggest)they will know the cost.
Also if you are sure that you are going to be installing any future cables then i in the past have ran in extras to difficult locations and just left them coiled in the ceiling or wherever.

 

[daronwilson]

>Doubling the cost of materials seems cheap to me.

Like I said, it's a guess. When we do big jobs, our computer program assigns hours for each piece of material and industry standard labor rates. Well those rates are good on commercial jobs, where you have to hike in, carry your tools, lock your stuff up or carry it all out, etc. For smaller jobs, the labor is too high.

When we review bids, the first thing I do is total the materials (there are rarely costly errors in materials if you read the specs and prints correctly), add the markup, double that number (to account for labor) and that should be close. If we are more than about 10% off, then we need to dig a bit and see where we are off.

I like to quote by the drop, it is fast, can be conpetitive, and allows the customer an easy budget. I don't use the same number all the time. Simple new commercial construction where we already have a crew in doing the electrical I may quote $100 per dual Cat5e drop. Remodel where it will be in stages and working around existing stuff may be $180. Just depends on the particulars of the job, and how much business that customer does with me regularly. On larger accounts that only use us for their cabling work, I routinely cut them a pretty good deal and just make a little less profit per job, but then I'm there for every job.

It's an art, not a science.

Good Luck!
It is only my opinion, based on my experience and education...I am always willing to learn, educate me!
Daron J. Wilson, RCDD
daron.wilson@lhmorris.com

 

[skip555]

we get at least 50 % up front on large jobs ,small (less than 10 drops ) we do with no money down .

to a extent it depends on the customer

 

[FoneChick]

Try this site:

http://www.celticrover.com/bgtt/cableguesstimator.asp

.. has excellent information to help you guesstimate lengths (and therefore costs)...

 

[vaoldschl]

I'm with Daron though I do it a little different. I calculate materials based ideally on blueprints and less ideally on a walk through, add 25% to that. Then calculate actual labor, add 25% to that as well and call it a Not to Exceed. I do this for the total job. I've only been burned once and even then I only took a minor blow to my hourly rate so that I could pay my helper his normal fee.

 

[RTMCKEE]

a stratagy I used to use is. I would figure total cost for labor and materials. Then I would give the customer a per drop price based on total cost divided by total drops. From there depending on what i thought the customer might do, Did i think he over cabled and might delete drops, did i think he under cabled and would add drops, adjust the per drop add/delete price in my advantage.

If the avg drop price was $200 and I though they might delete drops, the add/delete price was $160 if I though he was going to add drops, the add/delete price was $230. I was in the cabling business for 10 years, so I was pretty good at guessing what they were going to do. This worked pretty good for me, made a few extra bones on the changes.

RTMCKEE

 

[curlycord]

We use the per drop method at let say $100 per voice and $125 per data for runs under 200 feet and if the client wants us to run both the data and the voice (given the panels are very close together) then we give a discount and we also give a discount if it's a large amount of cables.
I agree with the walk thru in case of BS you might run into such as ignorant cable trays, small conduits to work with or no cieling applications or even ceilgs with no access where it would take you more time to do. ~Will Nortel soon be NoTel??~