Reed Construction Data is a publisher of that kind of data.

You can buy their books at amazon or at your local home depot.  I don't know if you can buy the data from their web site.

I cannot imagine any published data being any kind of accurate in today's economy/marketplace.

The work that I have been taking lately is 1.5 (on a good commuting day(metro Boston, MA)) from my house (southwestern NH). I take this work, because even after the cost of fuel and my windshield time I am able to make significantly more money than taking work that is quite local to me.

The problem with this is, locally I do not have to compete with 'Brazilian wages' (this is not meant to be an insult by any stretch, but it is a reality, and differing regions have their own version, I am sure), in metro Boston I do. What I had to learn was not to be afraid to walk away from a bid.  Some jobs are simply not for me. My personal philosophy is that if I lose a job by less than %5 on bid,... I need to work my references harder, not the calculator. Reputation should be able to cover that %5 (IMO).

I have found that chumming up with other (sub) contractors, I can get a "shelf price" from them to use in my bids. If the job (or the customer) presents itself as being particularly difficult then I increase my margin. I never go 'below the shelf' for things that look particularly easy,.... EVER!

In short, a successful bid needs to be what you can do the job for.

Lance is quite right.  Insurance and Restoration/Disaster companies use software that calculates EVERY possible expense.  Including finishing nails, caulking and paint for trim.  These won't necessarily help you bid, but they do break out all of the individual costs that you will have.

Chad

I work for an engineering firm.  Both contractor and engineering firms spend a fair amount of staff and dollars in developing cost estimating tools and adjusting these based on market conditions, trends, and geography.    Cost escalation and unknown conditions (surprises) are typically the two biggest risk issues.  I am talking here about municipal and industrial construction in the order of $30-250M contracts.  However, the same applies to residential construction, whether you talk about 1 or 100 houses.  You can have a boilerplate estimate, but you will need to adjust it accordingly to take into account contingencies, unkowns, delays, material cost escalation (there continues to be volatility in rebar, copper, and aluminum), site conditions, etc.

Anyways, my point is that you can get a software that will spit out a number from quantity take-offs, the number (s) will then need to be adjusted by trained eyes to reflect the reality of that specific job.

Cheers.

JGA.

     

Harry is correct regarding the mu tiplier. i use this type  if your cost are 500.00  divide that by .4 this is what i consider wholesale if you divide your wholesale number by .75 i use this as retail cost