Contemplating hiring an estimator
I’m in structural and misc. steel erection and I’m constantly in the field now where I try to bid on jobs but can never keep up with the bids coming in so I’m in a constant state of work slows down and don’t have much to do so bid on a bunch of work, then get slammed and don’t have time to even look at new bid requests and it’s just a rinse and repeat and it’s a real struggle to keep quality guys and I’m trying to stabilize my work flow and progressively do bigger projects. Im constantly getting emailed by guys claiming to be able to do my estimating for me but can’t ever really get a grasp of how that works and how they charge. Can someone on here please explain to me how an outsourced detailer would even bill for that because if they send out 100 bids and only win 10 do I have to pay for the entire hundred or only the won bids? Also how would they know how to price it as every job is different and can require more detail work on one. I’m just trying to wrap my head around this as I’ve been contemplating this for about 6 months now and it’s been hard to wrap my head around how this would work and any help is much appreciated.