Rogers' Hardscape Pros
Bidding questions, Courtesy of Tim Huinker, Anchor Wall Systems
This month, we are going to cover a topic that has been an ongoing debate for some time: should you bid by the square foot or production hour? Personally, I recommend bidding by the hour. When I started in the design-and-build process many years ago, I didn’t know any better, and bidding by the square foot was the logical way to bid.
As the company progressed and jobs became more sophisticated, I quickly learned the pitfalls of square-foot bidding. The last straw came when the owner of the company gave me a boulder wall to build at our normal $20.00 /sq. ft. price. When I arrived at the site to scope it out and get it on the schedule, I quickly realized the dilemma. The wall included tearing out some existing boulders, pulling back landscape rock and fabric, building the new boulder wall, hauling in more backfill and replacing the landscape rock and fabric. That sounded reasonable, until I realized that this wall was off a pool deck in the back of a fenced yard and that everything had to be dug by hand and wheeled in with wheel barrows. What could have taken a day with easy access turned into nearly three days with the existing conditions. Two things happened after that job: 1) The owner was no longer allowed to give numbers to anyone. 2) We no longer bid by the square foot. Every jobsite has unique conditions that will affect your cost to do the job. Tracking your hours on current jobs is the best way to become more accurate on your future bids. Be consistent and accurate in your tracking and soon you will have your own log book of items to cover nearly any site condition. For those of you who still want to keep square foot price, at least have additional charges for tough conditions. For more tips on bidding considerations, download an article that I’ve recently written about bidding.