Engineer

Can someone steer me in the right direction as to hiring someone to bid on electrical jobs for me? I've been searching and can't seem to come up with anything. As my company is growing, i have less time to pickup up work. Thanks.

NYElectricianNY said:

Can someone steer me in the right direction as to hiring someone to bid on electrical jobs for me? I've been searching and can't seem to come up with anything. As my company is growing, i have less time to pickup up work. Thanks.

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The last thing you want is an engineer to quote jobs. You want to find someone who will use some standard quoting and bill-of-materials program, that will be adapted to the way you work and will be "tested" against jobs that you have done. That same person might be doing purchasing and job accounting.

Go to www.mikeholt.com and sign up as a member of that board. They have a Contracting and Estimating forum. http://forums.mikeholt.com/

You don't want engineering creativity in estimating. You want solid consistency from someone who has done it for a business that makes money.

I'm an engineer and I would not touch estimating.

I work for an engineer and fully agree with Bob. We don't quote jobs, we may give rough guesses for design purposes but then we don't want to be held liable for those guesses so the response is usually carefully worded.

quotes

UNless the company knows your exact material costs, AND your employees capabilities so they can figure the time factor, AND your overhead costs, you may get jobs and lose money on them. The safest way would be to find someone who can give a material takeoff, then you calculate the material costs and labor, plus your profit and overhead.