See... On most jobs it turns out that two men means twice as fast, but this just came up recently on a nightmare of a house. this house was designed by some crack head architect. This multi-million dollar house had almost no wire chases, concrete slabs between each floor and steel beabs every where you looked. every pull required two men and the two day two men bid turned into5 days two guys. If it had been one man it would not have been done in anywhere near a reasonable amount of time.

Anyway I guess I wanted to know if anyone out there just uses a crew for roughins and charges a different rate than they would charge for lead installers to do it.

2 man crews don't = work done twice as fast... they = work done as much as 5 times faster- especially in a house desinged by a crack head (like one I just wired where the master bedroom isn't attached to the main house!)

It took me 8 hours to do alone... 6 hours of this time was wasted from having to go back and feed wire, then pull.. feed wire, then pull... rinse, repeat...

Ah, I forgot about the 5x multiplication factor. And don't forget that a 3-man crew is a 14x multiplication factor.

Seriously though, like I said, it's never exactly "twice". But if using two men makes a job go 5 times as fast, that tells me it was a job that required two men in the first place, in which case it's not really accurate to say that two men = 5 times as fast.

So does this mean that most of you guys bid the job? or do you just charge by the hour?

Our company always give bids on new construction work. Retrofit is typically (not always) done on T&M.

I wish we could charge time and materials! IF you can find any customers that go with that send them my way! We seriously can't find many customers that will allow anything other than a bid. We have had a couple nightmare jobs that we explained to the client that it would be done on a time and materials basis, or not done at all. And, when I say "a couple" I mean 1 or 2...thats it

McN, next time you get a customer who balks at a T+M bid, just bid high, and, as an option, tell them that, if the job goes quickly and snag-free, you will only charge for time used (plus materials, of course.

As for dirty work, I just estimate for extra time to make up for no-attic-floor or yucky crawlspace work. It's not the end of the world if someone else under-bids you. No one company can do all of the work.

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com

We just did a bid for a client who wanted us to do the job, but didn't want to sign the contract the way it was because it was an estimate, and could change depending on the scope of the work. It's a retro of an older home.

He said he couldn't sign an "open-ended" contract, that he'd never be able to get his clients to sign such a contract.

Needless to say, we won't be doing the job, as we smelled trouble from the start with this client. Trouble like - client says: "I see from the bid that the media portion is $16,800 and the house audio portion is "8,700, I'll give you $14000 for the media system and "8000 for the audio portion." This is after the system discount he wants these prices. Us: "Sorry sir, but these are our best bids."

JJP

For us we T+M everything, even new construction. It could be because we don't really have an outside salesman (to actually prepare a bid) or it could be that my boss is a cheap and doesn't want to ever miss a penny that he could have billed a client for. He'll put down every F-connector, every inch of IR wire, every nail on box. I mean cheap.