tools for pricing and accelerating works

[chanel86]

Hi,

I’m working in electro-mechanical contracting company.
And we have to much project @ the same time and now we are unable to price new projects because of time.
so anybody have an idea about managing big projects and techniques for pricing more efficiently i feel that sometimes I waste times in paperwork, preparing submittals and that's make me angry all the time .
So what is the solution?


ModonGroup S.a.r.l

 

[PeterStock]

A good problem to have in this economy.

Peter Stockhausen
Senior Design Analyst (Checker)
Infotech Aerospace Services

 

[GregLocock]

Well, you've got two choices

1) Stop spending so much time estimating, and go and help with the projects you have already landed

or

2) Add 20% to all your quotes and go and help with the projects you have already landed.

Guess what, being more expensive than the other guy doesn't always hurt. It might reduce the volume of jobs you get, but you may end up with better clients. I am struggling not to mention an obvious parallel.




Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[chanel86]

Yes it's true greck ,but as new company we need to build a very wide base of clients .also here in Lebanon u need to take projects to continue, now we have a booming of projects after a while it stops and after a while run again.

so i tried to use MS project to help me more in dividing projects into tasks and assign it to every member in the team. But still have problem in pricing? Is there any software that helps in pricing mechanical and electrical work?


ModonGroup S.a.r.l

 

[IRstuff]

Ideally, you use historical data that you scale to fit the scope of any current job. You should be able to come up with scaling factors for all your non-direct charges, like project management, overhead, etc.

The biggest challenge is determining the scale of the scope itself. Obviously, if a new job is identical to an old job, the task is easy.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[IRstuff]

You might look at Cost Xpert:

http://www.costxpert.com/en/index.html

as a possible approach to your specific industry. It's accepted as a means of estimating software development cost based on estimated number of lines of code for a project.

Of course, it's still pretty loosey-goosey. The estimate of lines of code is not exact, nor are the internal scaling factors for programmer experience and productivity.

Nonetheless, you can apply the principles to any historical data that you have to come up with a rational and numbers-based estimate of cost.

If you are in such a crunch, then you also need to account for scheduling conflicts and resource limitations.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[moltenmetal]

Delegate. Hire people to do the work so you can do the bidding.

Greg is dead right: price is a great way to modulate workload- if you're bidding fixed price rather than hours. If you win at a high margin, you have the pleasant problem of figuring out how to accomodate yet another very profitable job. It's the bad ones you will lose.

If you have a lot of work, you don't need to put as much work into your bids either. It takes far more work to bid something tight than it does to paint a rough estimate with enough contingency to make sure you make money.

 

[KENAT]

We used to use excel at my old place, we had a nice format that we'd list all the task, and enter number of hours for each type of resource for each task (also fields for materials, travel expenses etc.).

We'd add the hourly rate for the contract (sometimes different for different resources) and out popped the answer.

As to how we got the hourly rates and estimated the number of hours, that's another matter.

MS project is potentially usefull for when you're scheduling tasks to meet deadlines etc and avoid overlapping resource but for just coming up with a price probably a bit OTT.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484

 

[IRstuff]

re. MSP, yes, and no. While it appears to be OTT, time-phasing of effort and cost would be automatically generated from a properly constructed schedule. This can get you a reasonable estimate of cash flow and resource loading, or overloading, as the case might be.

Sometimes, it's not until the schedule is laid out with all other schedules that it becomes obvious that "Joe Blow" is overloaded 800%, because every project wants him, and only him, at precisely the same time frame.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[KENAT]

Maybe it's just the places I've worked, often seemed that the effort that went into preparing the MSP was not comensurate with the benefit it provided.

I can see it maybe being more usefull in a larger place but the small/medium places I've been I haven't been convinced.

For our programs we would use the data from the excel sheet to help populate MSP where applicable. At a previous employer the engineers/engineering manager would put together the excel sheet and a project accountant did the fancy MSP stuff with engineering input where required. When she left and we had to the detail MSP ourselves it sucked.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484