Field-tested tips from senior estimators. Use them as the sanity check before every number leaves your desk.
Price a realistic ratio — 1 lead / 2 journeymen / 1 helper beats 4 generic bodies. Blend the burdened rate, not the top of scale.
Assume 6.5 productive hours per 8-hour shift. Bake in mobilization, breaks, cleanup, and end-of-day tool time before you divide the scope.
Manpower is capped by access, not by budget. Two-story interior? One trade per floor. Tight mechanical room? One body in, one staging.
After 50 hrs/week productivity drops ~15%. Price OT at 1.5× wage AND 1.15× hours to hit the same output.
Scan the space end-to-end first. Note access, ceiling height, existing conditions, and demo. Half of missed cost lives here, not in the plans.
Get quantities off the model or scan first. Only then apply waste factors, crew productivity, and site-specific difficulty multipliers.
Every bid gets a contingency row you can defend: unknowns (5–10%), schedule risk (3–5%), escalation (2–4%). Never hide it in unit prices.
Before it ships, the foreman who will build it reviews crew size, sequencing, and duration. If they flinch, re-price it.
Historical $/sf holds in the middle 60% of jobs. Small jobs eat mobilization; mega jobs get productivity gains. Adjust both tails.
Every bid ships with a written assumptions & exclusions page. It's the cheapest change-order protection you'll ever write.
Drawings miss things. Read specs, RFIs, and addenda in that order and reconcile against the plan set before you total.
Access, power, and water. If any one is unclear on walk-through, that's a qualified bid — not a hard number.
Factors are industry starting points — always calibrate against your own historical job costs.