To the pipeline contractors- Without getting into any detail, what percent are you guys tacking on for profit (after figuring costs)? 10 week project :drinkup -Joi
I am not a big contractor by any means but I try to shoot for 20%. That number varies based on how many bidders there are and the difficulty of the project.
I try for 20%, but on water main jobs you have to go a little lower like 15% to get the job then try to bang it out real quick. I usually do more sewer work where you have less people bidding sometimes I'll mark it up 25-30% if it's real hairy.
I was thinking 15%, but I didn't add it in. Bids were opened this morning. Unfortunately, there's no consolation prize for 4th place (out of 14 bids). We were the closest to the engineer's estimated cost. The job was installing 27.8 km of water main. Oh well, there's more work out there.
It used to be that you can take the material on a watermain job and double it and be ok. Assuming that the job is ductile. Now anymore that isn't always the case. I like to try to get at least 20% but like everyone else says, it depends on amout of utilities and traffic and such. Deep sewer is my fav thing to do.. either make it big or lose it big..