I recently received a bid package to do a bid on a 350 K square foot parking garage. There is a total of three of us bidding on it. I know through a friend that the other two bids are $10400.00 and $7800.00. with some of the parameters that they put on this job like night work only, got to haul the solid waste off of property and all water must be filtered for oil. Am I crazy for thinking that these prices are way too low? With the a cost of insurance,water, labor, soaps Etc this seems like something I should walk away from. Others are telling me this is not a bad deal. I would estimate the job should take me maybe 6 days. What do you think?
Why would you walk away from a chance to bid. Make your price higher than the competition and sell on quality/ experience/ precieved value.
Don’t race to the bottom. A premium product requires a premium price. Give information , before and after, etc with your quote. Also offer to speak one on one as needed to assure them you are the best choice.
If you bid considerably higher than the competition it may make them look like hacks/99 dollar guys.
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I agree with you on a premium product. It is crazy what some pot head dreams up. They go out in their 92 Corolla and a Sam’s club pressure washer and Bam he is perceived as professional. Pushing down rates. Have you seen this new takl app? That too is as big a joke as Craigslist. I I’ve only been doing this a couple of years and I have a loyal following. Quite a bit of repeat business and referrals. Sorry let me get off of my soapbox. I will not engage in a race to the bottom of rates. Like the rest of you I have too much invested to just trade paper. That bid for $10800.00 breaks down to approximately $0.03 a square foot. the cheapest I’ve ever done was for my best man in my wedding at $0.15 a square foot. thank you for your input
I think your friend may be lying. If you’ve got some serious equipment I could see 9-.10 /ft. I wouldn’t rinse it off with ball valve for .03/ft.
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Volume means NOTHING if you are not getting paid for it. I’m not trying to sound trite but I am roughly 30% higher than most of my competitors and I occasionally discount my price for large jobs, close to my house etc. in fact I did it this week on a fence staining job that I bid for 3250.00 for 5000 sq ft. I went all the way down to 2600.00 and change. I’ll still clear just under 1700.00 for two days work (not full days 3 hrs to clean and 4-5 hrs to stain) plus 25 min on the bid. Sell on the quality of your work and make cogent arguments if need be to support your price.
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Yea that price seems way off. Put your bid in at the price you need/want. Then let em go with the lower priced bid from the other guys. Once the property owner realizes what a crap job they did then have them call you to go in an clean it.
Sometimes you just gotta bid a job for what you need to and let the property owners suffer the hassel of dealing with the incompetent contractor before they realize you get what you pay for.
Thank you all for your input. I’ll give an update in a few days
Put in your estimate… 25 grand with licence insurance and all permits. 10 grand if we use your license insurance and and your office pulls all the permits…
Smart add way of saying, charge your price and show you have all that stuff because a lot of people won’t include it in their bids…
before and afters too!
Short paragraph why you are better etc.
Thats ridiculously low. Shoot…if you asked jim gam** hed tell you that he’s gettim 150k for a job like that
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