YOUR BID IS BUILT ON ASSUMPTIONS THAT DON'T MATCH YOUR FIELD.
Most subcontractor bids are built on three assumptions that are wrong. Production rates come from memory or trade references that don't reflect what your crew produces. Burden rates get built on wages instead of fully loaded labor cost. Overhead percentages haven't been recalculated in years. When the estimate is built on wrong inputs, the bid price is wrong before the first day of work, and no amount of field execution fixes a job that was underbid at the start.
Margin leakage starts before the job is even awarded, which is why bidding higher across the board doesn't fix it. Bidding higher just loses the work at the same wrong price. The correction is to build estimates from your own field data: your crew's production rates by work type, your fully burdened labor cost, and an overhead rate calculated from real expenses. When those three inputs are right, the bid reflects what the job will cost you to build. When they're wrong, the closeout gets blamed on the field, and the field had nothing to do with it.
WHAT IT MEANS.
Estimate inputs are the production rates, burden rates, and overhead percentage a bid gets priced from, and when any one of them is wrong the bid price is wrong before the job starts.
WHERE BID ASSUMPTIONS DIVERGE FROM THE FIELD.
Production rates built on averages, not your crew
Every trade has published production rates, from RS Means, NECA manuals, and trade associations. Those rates represent industry averages across thousands of projects and contractor types. Your crew's production on your work types in your markets may be 15% better or 20% worse than the average, and when you bid the published rate while the field runs a different one, every estimate carries a structural error from line one. The fix is to pull your own production rates out of job cost history: hours spent per unit installed by work type, by season, and by crew makeup.
Burden rates built on wages, not fully loaded cost
An estimator who prices labor at $28/hour because that's the crew's wage rate is understating labor cost by 35% to 55%. The fully burdened rate is the wage plus payroll taxes at 7.65% FICA, workers' comp that runs 8 to 25% of wages depending on the trade, general liability allocation, health insurance, 401k, and every other employer cost, and it commonly runs $42 to $60 for a $28/hour field employee. A $500,000 labor estimate built on wage rates instead of fully burdened rates can be understated by $175,000 to $275,000. That is an estimating input problem.
Overhead percentage unchanged for 3 to 5 years
Most subcontractors apply a fixed overhead percentage that was set when the business was smaller, the team was leaner, or costs were lower. Overhead grows with the business through more supervision, more software, more insurance, and more office space. If the rate was set at 10% two years ago and the business has added a superintendent, a project coordinator, and a fleet of trucks since then, the real overhead rate might be 16% while the estimates still show 10%. Every bid is underpriced by 6 points of overhead, and on $2M of annual bid volume that's $120,000 of overhead never recovered.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
A $3M subcontractor with 40% labor content, meaning $1.2M, using wage rates instead of burdened rates is understating labor cost by $420K to $660K annually. That is a pricing error on every bid the company sends out. The number never appears as a line item anywhere, which is why it reads as a mystery at closeout.
A production rate 15% optimistic against published averages means every job estimate is 15% short on labor hours. On a $500K labor estimate that's $75K in unbudgeted hours. Win 4 jobs like that and it's $300K in margin gone before the first crew mobilizes.
A 6 point overhead rate shortfall on $4M in annual revenue is $240K in fixed cost not recovered through bids. The business covers it out of net profit instead. That means there's $240K less profit than the P&L suggests, every year, until the rate gets corrected.
BUILDING ESTIMATES FROM ACTUAL FIELD DATA.
Pull your last 5 closed jobs and answer three questions for each one. What production rate did the estimate assume against what the field ran? What burden rate was used against what labor cost fully loaded? What overhead rate was applied against what the business ran? If those pairs don't match within 10%, your estimates are off the same way every time, and the comparison tells you by how much.
THE OUTPUTS, NAMED.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SURPRISES.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No hourly billing, no payroll, and no add-ons.
Pricing
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee |
|---|---|
| Up to $1M | $1,900 to $2,900 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $3,900 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $5,700 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $7,100 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $8,500 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $11,000 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $13,500 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually |
Range reflects the three tiers below. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No payroll. No hidden line items.
You stop guessing.
You get the CFO work. Job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a meeting every month that ends in decisions rather than a report.
Your bookkeeper keeps doing the books.
You stop touching the books.
Everything in Core, and we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Nobody in your office is answering coding questions or chasing a reconciliation at month end.
We do the books. No payroll.
Every job shows its margin while it's still running.
Everything in Executive, plus the job costing and WIP platform set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed for you every month. You never have to learn it.
We do the job costing.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
