Best Electrical Estimating Guides

It is obviously not obvious. I teach a lot of people how to estimate electrical projects. I also teach or at least share my experience of running an electrical contracting business with many new people with little more than a dream. You would think if you are starting an electrical contracting business that a few things would be obvious like: Having a name for your company. Having the correct license. Having employees. Having a way to get your employees to the job. Having enough tools to get started. Cords, ladders, drills, benders, etc. Having enough working capital to pay your employees. Setting up an account with an Electrical Supply House. Having a few customers willing to give you work or at least bid their work. Some idea of how to...

Labor Burden    What does it actually cost my Electrical Company to work an employee?   This is a great question! If you are going to run a profitable electrical contracting business, then you need to know exactly what running that business costs. That knowledge will allow you to estimate electrical projects accurately and also keep you in business.   What you pay your employee is not what it cost you to work that employee.   Often employees don’t appreciate or consider what compensation they are being paid that does not show up on their paycheck. Most only look at what they bring home each week. If you are providing a phone, truck, 401K, vacation, holidays, and insurance, for example, they are receiving more compensation than what shows on their...

10-Reasons to use the Best Bid Hybrid Pro 01. Speed Using the Best Bid Hybrid Pro will make estimating faster than you could ever imagine. Being able to select an Assembly, enter your quantities, and generate the perfect material list of products that would take hours to produce by hand is amazing. Not only are the materials listed, they are priced, extended, and the time it should take to install is also recorded. Collecting detailed information about the estimate with just a few clicks makes estimating seem effortless. 02.  Accuracy Spending time massaging your results before doing your first estimate will ensure that the results that you receive are spot on. No more math mistakes or wrong extensions. No more extending a long list of prices or man-hours. Your estimates...

You woke up today with an increasable desire to change the way your company is estimating electrical projects. Furthermore, you know that you have fallen behind on technology. You finally understand that you must have electrical estimating software to compete.  What you have not discovered so far is how many estimating products there are on the market. You have also not discovered that it is not that easy to sort through the choices. Basically, they all say the same thing. We can save you time, we are easy to use and of course, we can win you more work at a greater profit.  Subsequently, when you started looking for electrical estimating software you might have thought that you would just GOOGLE electrical estimating software and the first name that shows...

You won the project but that is just the start. One of the most overlooked tasks in electrical contracting is Job Tracking. Smaller electrical contractors, just getting their electrical shop open, are overwhelmed with all the things that they have never had experienced being an electrician in the field. The list can be sobering, to say the least. License, insurance, Taxes, Payroll, OSHA rules, Employee rights, purchasing tools, and trucks. We could list an entire page of items and not touch the surface. Being confident with your estimates. Being confident in estimating electrical projects is one thing but tracking the estimate after the bid is equally important.  Furthermore, new electrical contractors, without a lot of previous office experience often fall victim to making decisions that are not knowledge-based. Bidding electrical work by the sq. ft or unit pricing will close your business fast. Not...

I only missed (2) light fixtures no big deal, right? The overlooked estimator As estimators, we will never be perfect and from time to time we will miss something. We do our best to get it right and weigh our time spent VS cranking out enough estimates to please the boss. Not everyone understands the importance of the estimate. After all, if the estimate isn't right, nothing else matters. The estimate is the foundation of the entire project. Your company will fail or succeed in its ability to estimate. Estimators seldom get the credit they deserve. Moreover, it is the Project Manager and Superintendent over the project that has the day-to-day control of the outcome, after the estimate. Subsequently, their face will be the face that is remembered as the...

The lost art of estimating In today’s computer age we have become custom to just pushing buttons and living with the results. The art of actually entering our knowledge along with the computer generated results has long been forgotten. Shorter bid dates, having to produce more estimates than ever before, are some of the issues we face each day. Detailed electrical estimating seems to be a lost art.

The Easy Path There is an easy path to creating an accurate electrical estimate reasonably fast. The answer is simple. “Spend endless hours learning how”. You must be willing to spend time learning how to estimate in the first place. Then master software to take what you already know and turn it into an electrical estimate that you are comfortable with. For instance at Best Bid we offer the best electrical estimating and on-screen takeoff software that can you can purchased. Our electrical bid software is easy, fast accurate, and affordable. Moreover a company like ours has the expertise to help you with all if your electrical estimating needs. This knowledge is a service that can't be purchased. Consequently the Best Bid Hybrid Pro is the most incredible software that we...

s Most people define leadership differently but “A leader knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” No matter how you define a leader, they can be a difference-maker between success and failure.In business, your goal should be to become successful. Once you understand that you become successful not only impacts you, your family, and your employees but when you become successful you are now in a place to help others. This would be a great place for a bible study.  ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together!’ This is true all through business. If your employees do well with the small tasks they move up to...

Dan Jackson AKA Dans The Engineer I am borrowing this post for Dan Jackson AKA Dans the Engineer. There are some good lessons here and I have added my take. Do Electricians Really Earn That Much? Since entering the electrical trade, I have always heard people say that electricians are loaded and they earn loads of money, but do they really earn that much? I have read in media articles that electricians are earning more than £100k, but can you become a millionaire as an electrician? 100 pounds is like $130K so obviously England pays more than the US for electrical contracting.The average rate in TN may be $25ish and the average rate in California may be $45ish Early Ambitions and Background I grew up on a council estate and...