The Best Estimators Understand What Happens After the Bid

One of the biggest mistakes I think we make with estimator development is assuming the best way to create better estimators is simply to give them more estimates to do.

Experience certainly matters. But there's a big difference between estimating 100 projects and actually learning from 100 projects.

I spent years in operations before moving heavily into estimating, and that experience changed the way I looked at an estimate. When I put six people in a crew, I could picture those six people actually trying to achieve the production I was carrying.

But here's the bigger point.

An estimate isn't just a price. It's the original business plan for how your company believes it can build the project and make money doing it.

Once you look at it that way, estimator development starts looking a little different.

What happens after the bid?

Think about your own estimating department.

Your estimator spends weeks or months developing a project. The company wins it. There's a handoff meeting. Operations takes over.

Now what?

Does that estimator ever find out whether the production assumptions were right?

Does the estimator learn that the crew carried in the estimate wasn't realistic because of access or sequencing?

Does anyone come back six months later and explain where the project is making money and where it's struggling?

Or has the estimator already moved on to the next five bids?

That's where I think a tremendous amount of development gets lost.

Operations has some responsibility here too

I've heard Operations criticize estimating throughout my entire career.

"We don't have enough hours."

"Nobody can build it for this."

"Why did they carry this crew?"

Sometimes Operations is absolutely right.

But I would ask the opposite question too.

Does the PM or Superintendent understand what the estimator was thinking?

Do they know what production was carried and why?

Do they understand where the estimator saw risk and where the estimator saw opportunity?

Do they know what assumptions were made about equipment, manpower, access and sequence?

Because once that project is awarded, those assumptions aren't estimating's problem anymore.

They're the company's problem.

Here's the takeaway

If I owned a construction company, I would pay close attention to how much your departments actually understand about each other's work.

Not whether they attend the same meetings.

Whether they actually understand it.

Your estimator should understand what happens when the estimate reaches the field.

Your PM should understand how the project was priced.

Your Superintendent should understand the production assumptions the company committed to.

And your emerging leaders should start learning how all of these pieces connect long before you're considering them for senior leadership.

Training needs to be about developing construction professionals who understand how their decisions affect the rest of the business.

Your departments can be filled with really talented people and still cost you a lot of money if everyone only understands their own side of the wall.

Gerard Aliberti
Pro-Accel, Owner

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Ways We Can Work Together

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