Building a paving estimating team

There's a season when the owner can't walk every lot and write every estimate anymore. The proposals start going out a week late, or at 11 p.m., or not at all. The fix is an estimator, or a foreman who becomes one. The first one often doesn't work out, and it's rarely because they can't run a measuring wheel.

It's because the way the owner prices a job lives in the owner's head.

Write down how you price before you hire

Before anyone else prices work for you, put these on paper:

Your costs: plant prices by mix, crew rates by position with burden, equipment rates per day, trucking, and the subs you use and what they charge.
Your production: how many tons your paving crew lays in a day on a lot, how many square feet your sealcoat crew covers, how many stalls your striper lays out.
Your margin: what you need on each kind of work, and how you get there.
Your minimums: the smallest job you'll send a crew to, and what equipment transport and setup costs you.
Your rules of thumb: when you add base repair, when you mill instead of overlay, when you walk away.
Your exclusions: what every proposal says you're not doing.

Update the cost numbers when the plant changes prices and at the start of every season. An estimator working from last year's plant price is underbidding before they measure anything.

Who makes a good estimator

Someone from the field. A foreman or a lead operator who's organized and good with customers already knows what a lot takes: where the base is soft, how long hand work takes around islands, how many trucks a pull needs. You can teach them the proposal. It's much harder to teach an office hire what a failed base looks like.

Someone who writes clearly. The estimator's scope is what the crew builds and what the customer holds you to.

Someone customers trust. On a lot of jobs the estimator is the first person from your company the customer meets.

Train on real jobs

Have the new estimator walk lots with you and price them separately. Compare the two estimates line by line.
Go through last season's jobs, won and lost, and look at what each one actually took against the estimate.
Let them price small jobs alone first, with you checking the numbers before they go out.

A second look before every proposal goes out

Somebody who didn't build the estimate looks at it before the customer does. They're not re-pricing it, just checking:

Do the square feet match the drawing?
Is the depth what the spec or the walk called for?
Are the tons right for the area and depth?
Is every part of the job on it: base repair, milling, striping, equipment transport and setup?
Is the margin where it should be?
Are the exclusions there?

That catch is the dropped zero, the missing apron, the lot priced at 2 inches that needed 3.

Track why you win and lose

Every lost lead gets a reason: price, timing, went with someone else, no response, project canceled. After a season, the pattern tells you something. If you lose most commercial work on price, either your costs are high or you're chasing work that isn't yours. If you lose on timing, proposals are going out too slowly.

Track it by estimator too, gently. The goal is to find where the way you price needs work, not to run a leaderboard.

Pavr is estimating and job software for paving, sealcoating, striping and concrete contractors. Everyone on the team prices from the same plant prices and crew rates, and every job you lose, and every request you decline, keeps its reason. Try it free →

Building a paving estimating team: from the owner's estimates to someone else's