If you really want to make money consistently on each and every one of your jobs you need to estimate your jobs, not guesstimate them. Accurate estimating is crucial to your long term financial health.
Let me tell you how paint estimating should be done if you want to make money. Everything you do needs to be measurable for labor, materials and equipment. How do you do that?
Using our wall as an example, we need to find out how many squre feet of wall can be painted one coat in an hour. Let's say you know from experience it takes an hour per 300 sf to apply a coat of paint. So, for the 100 foot wall, 9 feet tall, you need to bid 3 hours per coat, or 9 hours toal, plus 3 gals of paint. For the 120 foot wall you need to bid 3.6 hours per coat, or 10.8 hours total, plus 4 gals of paint. When you're guesstimating, which way too many contractors do, you're frequently either leaving money on the table or over bidding and not getting the job. Most of the time money is left on the table because you're eager to get the job.
Estimating is not a perfect science, but it beats the heck out of guesstimating. You may be asking yourself "how do I really know that I'm using the right standards for my estimating?" How do you know for sure that it takes 1 hour per 300 sf of wall per coat?
Estimating and Job Cost - the Secret to Making Money
In order to be confident in estimating, you need to measure your results. That's the only way to be sure that your estimating correctly is to measure your results. In the wall example above, let's say it only took 8 hours to paint the wall. You probably would modify your time for future estimates from 300 sf per hour to 338 sf per hour per coat.That's how you make money consistently from job to job to job. Do everything in measurable units, measure the results and adjust your estimating for future projects.
