pricing

Sorry treedog- I've outlined the procedure in more detail and probably more intelligibly before. My point was-you do need to look at all of the job to make a safe and accurate bid. One way to do that is to look at and write specs and an item price for every single tree. That is accurate but takes a lot of time. It is possible to look at every tree without writing an individual price for each tree. I take a pad of paper and make a mark for each $100. When I look at a particular unit I look at trees and lump them into $100 units-These two little trees are worth $100 total so they get one mark-That tree is worth $300 so 3 more marks. This one is worth $125 and that one is worth $175 so that is $300-3 more marks. After the walk around I only need to count marks and multiply by 100. I have done bids for a whole trailer park or condo complex in less than hour using this method including making notes about special treatment for trees at certain units-it is a fast way to develop an accurate bid. You can also develop an itemized bid that doesn't list every item-while doing the walk around keep blocks of work seperated in your notetaking then you can give subtotals for all the work at units ABC another total for DEF etc. This gives the management options about doing certain segments of work first and others later without having to note every $15 shrub reduction and the individual prices on 6 different sized trees. (It also works for collecting progress payments along the way since completing the various blocks make tracking the $ ammount of work completed easy.)

Clear as mud?
 
Thank you Stumper, I wish I had it sooner seeing that I just spent 4 hours looking and taking notes.
Here is the skinny of it.
282 removals, 184 pruning and 302 stumps to be ground.
less than 30% of the job can be done from a bucket.
No room for a crane.
Only 30 trees 30' or under.
All the trees are oaks with 12"-30" diameter and 40-60' tall. Most are tight against the buildings overhanging the roofs. Alot of labor to get them out. No real room for the skidsteer. Most of the logs have to be chunked and carried.
I feel I overlooked alot when doing the walkthrough with the customer. They know it is a big job, which will cost a couple of bucks.
It looks more like 6 day weeks for 6 weeks.
I have been in Florida for a year doing business. I haven't nailed down a crew that I am comfortable with yet. They work well, but not nearly as well as the crew I had back in Mass. That is why I say 6 weeks.
I am the only climber. That amount of time allows me 7-8 take downs and 5 pruning per day.
Fire away with the remarks, I need a little advice.
thank you for your time and interest.
 
Higher 2 climbers. IMO you would come out better managing the job than doing the job.

One thing I learned last year doing some removals with a 100 ton crane is I could have saved mondo money (3k bucks estam)if I would have been on the ground managing the operation.

One way to think of it is you need to make X ammount an hour. For 6 men an hour here I would charge around 300-350 an hour (figure that your temp crew will be skilled less than a full time crew). Thats around 5 bucks a minute. It doesnt take saving but 4-5 minutes per hour to have a decently paid climber fill in for you, I know I could save more time than that by managing a job. Lets say you could save 10 minutes an hour being on the ground, thats 50 an hour, 400 a day, 2400 a week.

While the climber is taking down one tree, there may be a small prune or two you could knock out to keep the work being churned out.

On a job that size I would think that 2 climbers plus yourself would be nice, you will burn yourself out climbing 10 trees a day, and with 2 climbers, you could rotate in if you wanted some action or saw something you were better suited to doing.

Just my 2 cents
 
The price is in. They seemed to like it. I used all of your advise throughout the proposal. Thankyou very much for your assistance on a quote this size. It is a large one for me.
I will let you know how it goes.
 
well, thank you all you help, I lost the job.
Your advise and myprice were right on the money. The general cont had a buddy in the business. They also decided to scale down the job. I didn't get the opertunity to price it after they downsized it.
Thank you all again.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New threads New posts

Back
Top Bottom