Winning a bid is easy. Winning a bid and making money is another matter. Would you like to know how to win the maximum number of bids? How about knowing how to guarantee the success of your construction business? Then this course is for you.

Most contractors assume that by adding a certain percentage to the material and labor cost they will be successful. Nothing could be further from the truth! This course, contributed to by contractors with over 100 years combined experience, will open your eyes to "real" costs of your bidding strategy.

Please understand that this is an online course only. There is no book.

• Putting Together a Plan - Attitude, leadership, goals, priorities, implementation
• Your Competitors - Charting your competition, what the win/loss ratio tells you, how to use it and when to use it
• What Jobs to Bid - Qualifying the job, work-on-hand, timing, ability to perform, capital requirements, bonding, banks, suppliers, pay-when-paid clauses, future work
• Keeping Track - Planned v. actual sales, niche market, ROI, prospecting

• Office Overhead/Job Overhead - Knowledge of your true costs is critical, separating expenses, the difference between mark-up and mark-on, percentages and hourly rates
• What Are the Costs in Overhead - examples of the difference between job expenses and overhead, the one true method of guaranteeing profitability
• Where & How to Apply Overhead - What is overhead calculated on?, comparison of small and large shops, overhead formulas can be deceiving, forecasting your overhead

• Take-Offs - The correct way to do take-offs, subcategories, separating office overhead from job overhead, square footage and other shortcuts
• Productivity - Adjustments to reflect field conditions, consistency and accuracy are keys, a rational look at your ability to perform
• Classifications -  Labor classifications and arriving at a mean cost, labor overhead and hidden costs, direct job expenses
• Final Applications - Checks and balances, what to include and exclude

• Organizing Quotes - Initial and final requests, evaluation of suppliers and subs, verification, inclusions and exclusions, ethics
• Finalizing -  The ingredients of a complete bid
• Profit - ROI revisited, dollar or percentage?, sliding scale based on time, verification  
• Miscellaneous Items- Bonds, fees, temps, etc.
• Final Bid Price - Summation, square footage, who are we bidding this too?, adjustments, alternates, inclusions, exclusions, verbal and written quotes, update the bid log

Look at our other online construction courses:

Project Management - Real world PM as it is.
Basic Estimating - The nuts and bolts of preparing a winning bid.