After my week off for my honeymoon I am back in the swing of things and embarking and yet another new task. Now that we have gotten through one of the busiest couple weeks I have seen here at Phoenix Metalworks we are going to be needing to get more work line up for the future to keep things rolling smoothly. Bidding/Estimating steel projects is my newest venture in learning. We use a site called Builders Exchange of Washington (BXWA) where owners and/or general contractors post upcoming jobs that we are able to put bids on. Navigating through the site didn't take too long to figure out but crunching the numbers for a hard bid has proved to be quite the stretch.
Things that I am learning when it comes to bidding is being aware of steel prices as they tend to fluctuate drastically from week to week. A bid could be put in months before the project actually takes off and the steel prices can often spike or dive. Navigating through plans can be a tedious process of jumping from on sheet to another and detail to detail of a specific part of job. Things could easily be missed in doing a take-off so attention to details is highly important. Also, considering every aspect to a job needs to be included. For example, if a bid is put in for fabricating and installing steel canopies you need to consider the job site access for use with forklifts/cranes or any other needed equipment. I ran into an issue with a general on our last install that proved to be a learning experience when it came to this. Although we had been to the jobsite and planned out the install with use of forklifts and man lifts, he seemed to think we were complete newbies in doing it this way. He fought with me for 20 minutes trying to get us to rent a crane for the install which would have cost nearly $5 a minute to have somebody operate it.... NOT WHAT I WANTED TO DO!!! After winning that argument we showed up on set ready to rock that morning and had all steel erected by the end of the week. The general was extremely impressed with our decision and we have now made a solid contact with that company for future work.
Learning each and every day is exciting and stressful all at once but I am building confidence with every single lesson learned.
Hours: 40
Total: 233
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