Contractors! Estimating is your Lifeline.

Of Course! the ultimate truth is that at the end of the day, you need to make profit. Civil Contracting has always been a profitable but competitive and somewhat tricky business. Among all the processes involved from inception of the bidding documents till the final taking over certificate, in any project, the most neglected one is estimating.

This negligence comes in varying factors. Still existing are some contractors who are pricing the bill items, from historical data base, without reviewing the exact specifications or clients' requirements shown in different parts of tender documents, such as engineering drawings, specifications and terms of contracts. Others, cannot appreciate the fact that headoffice overheads needs to be considered while applying markups. Some even forget to price the cranes in a building projects, merely because there is no bill item in the client's bill!!! This is without exaggeration and this phenomenon, non-technical owners of Contracting companies suffers regularly.

Estimating, which perhaps decades ago being dealt with as "Guesstimating", is now a science with "almost absolute" precision. This is the foundation stone of the project which though, still on papers, but requires the utmost attention of the owners, if they want to make money in the end, and avoiding losses which could be easily prevented by adopting synchronised estimating procedures.

Serious overhauling should be anticipated, if you want to compete professionally and win jobs without getting bankrupt, later. SOME of the measures one can adopt are as follows:

• Choose the correct resources: be it humans, machines, softwares

• Learn to choose the RIGHT bid.

• Let go the tenders for which you have not ample resources to finish properly on time.

• Consider bidding as a live project itself: Plan and manage the timing and the resources.

• Estimate is not a monopoly of estimators/quantity surveyors
  only: Complete estimate requires a team of planners, quantity surveyors, estimators, contracts specialist and operational experts. This does not always needs to be separate individuals...( ideally yes if revenue permits ) but all estimates must be a conglomerate of the above mentioned expertise.

• Evaluate and "price" the risks separately.

• Always allow for companys' overheads separate from the profit you anticipate. You may call it a "markup".

A comprehensive estimate requires to be managed in specified time frame, without compromising the accuracy in pricing and thorough evaluation of clients requirements.
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Invest in making a proper estimating department as this decision can make or break the future of your contracting business.