Welding Tips and Tricks

Hi all,

I am looking for some advice, or other peoples experience on bidding custom work.

I work in a small fab shop that repairs and makes parts for boats. Most of our work is refitting or fixing and sometimes re-designing parts on 20+ year old pleasure craft. A lot of stainless steel, aluminum and some silicon bronze work.

We have had a few larger jobs recently that we under bid. Time and materials is always nice, but many customers want a bid or estimate before they commit to having any work done. Often times we have to remove the old part, fix anything that has gone bad under it, fab the part and install it. Many times the original part was only half funcional or just plain didnt work. In this case we have to re-design it so it will work, and them make it and reinstall it. Often the access to the part, or its mounting hardware is restricted, making it even more fun.

I realize there is no easy answer to this, more than anything I am just curious to hear what others are doing and what has worked for them.

thanks

Here is what I do, right or wrong it usually gets me pretty close.

Figure out your materials and what the customer will be charged for them. Then figure out your labor. I know that sounds dumb and obvious but I'll get there. Then add in any outside work. Then take the total of all that and add a 10-25% buffer. You will know how big you can go on this by experience, just always let the customer know that you will not exceed this number unless things come up that aren't in the quote.

Now the labor part. What I usually do is figure out how fast you will be welding on whatever you will be quoting. If you are welding 2 pieces of 1/2" flat in a lap joint at 3" welds with short circuit mig then that's how you figure out how long it takes to make that particular weld. Then figure out roughly how many linear inches of weld in the project. Take that number times 2 if you have simple fit ups or nearly meaningless bead running or up to times 4 or 5 for difficult fitup projects. Then if you need to add any disassembly and reassembly time that may not be covered by the welding estimate.

That got long and boring but it gets me pretty close every time.

Good luck!

Thomas Edison's formula...

Whatever you think it will take, double it, then add 10%.


Works more often than not. There's a reason he was "the wizard of Menlo Park."

Hey,

Jody has a videoon quoting jobs, but I beleive that for mainly welding. What about all jobs start a 50 bucks then 25 an hour plus materials. Or is that too simple.

Mick

The Thomas Edison formula is just about right, especially when it comes to custom metal work. We bid on a lot of custom work ,and while there is no real formula that works in all cases, we've found that in most cases labor will be roughly twice what materials are. We also use a system for pricing labor called a "man/day", that is what we charge per man per day. You have to figure out what a day rate will be for each employee...that includes his/her hourly wage, insurance, any kind of overhead all gets put into it.....so lets say an employee winds up costing you $35.00 an hour, so you charge off that employees labor at $45 an hour or a day rate (man/day) of $450.

When you look at bidding a job, you think it will take 2 guys 2 days to do it..that's 4 man/days x $450 or $1800/ labor plus whatever materials cost.

We never do a per hour quote, we will always figure either a full man/day or a half day and then round up. Make sure you mark up materials, too.

It takes some playing with it, but it seems to work pretty good for us. Occasionally we will be off on labor time, but after doing different jobs it gets easier to guesstimate the time to do it.


Hope that helps

Other Steve

We go by a competitive shop rate (plus materials) as a base at 90/hr for custom fab, which entails design work, then work backwards from there. We primarily do marine fabrication. Most small jobs start with an hr minimum. That may sound like a lot for a 20 dollar weld until you figure in consultation time and talking with the customer just for the in/out transaction process alone. But, that doesn't mean we just get 90/hr for just being me. I am a fast, precise fabricator and welder with very few wasted moves. I know the materials and how long things take to always be able to make money at that rate. After that, you have to be fair. Is a little bracket you took 30 mins to design and build really worth 90 dollars or the 1 hr minimum? Also, we don't dumb our work down. We do one kind of work and that's custom. We get customers in that think they want a hack job at a bargain or a walmart styled facsimile of the real thing. It's actually harder to figure out how to do it wrong than it is just to do it right and you end up eating it.

Other things to consider. What are you putting aside to do the job? I have customers that walk in needing their job done now. If I am currently working on a scheduled 10k dollar project, what is their emergency actually costing me outside of the obvious? Are your current projects on schedule with the deadline? They should have to at least share the penalty if they are stepping on other schedules toes.

TamJeff wrote:...Other things to consider. What are you putting aside to do the job? I have customers that walk in needing their job done now. If I am currently working on a scheduled 10k dollar project, what is their emergency actually costing me outside of the obvious? Are your current projects on schedule with the deadline? They should have to at least share the penalty if they are stepping on other schedules toes.

That's a brilliant assessment... It's not just the hours for YOUR job... It's also the hours I'm NOT spending on the other one, taking care of your "emergency".

Well put!

Where is jody's video on pricing

If you have an hourly rate already set for labor then it is fairly easy. I always charge double time for time spent accessing the piece and then replacing it. If you charge $20 an hour then $40 an hour till you get to the part, 20 while welding, 40 to put it back. I always charge full cost for material. The reason for charging double time to access the part it encourages the customer to just bring me the part and do all the digging themselves. Just my personal technique but since I've never done a bidding job, take it for what it is worth.
Matt