If you live in a cold climate, you certainly experience changes, sometimes extreme changes, in weather. These conditions can make production take a nosedive, and that should be accounted for in your bid pricing.
Too often, an estimator prices a winter project during the summer or fall without giving much thought to extreme cold, snow, ice, numb fingers, difficult access, or the other conditions the field crew may face months later.
I have discussed this subject with hundreds of contractors over the years, and most admit they don’t add money to their bids for cold weather. They usually say, “It’s just the nature of the business.” Yet those same contractors also agree that cold weather slows their crews down.
That doesn’t make much sense.
It may be something as simple as workers making more trips because snow and ice make it difficult to carry as much material or equipment. A metal framer may lose production because cold hands and gloves make it harder to handle screws. Drywall crews may deal with difficult material handling and access. Painters may face temporary heat, cold surfaces, drying conditions, and other winter-related problems.
There are plenty of ways winter conditions can affect drywall, metal framing, and painting production. The important point is that the estimator needs to think about those conditions before the job starts.
It makes no sense to say a worker can install so many square feet or linear feet per day when you already know the conditions may prevent him or her from producing at that rate.
If you bid a project expecting a 10% profit but fail to account for reduced winter production, don’t be surprised if that 10% becomes 7%, and that’s assuming nothing else goes wrong.
Cold weather can reduce production by 10%, 20%, 30%, or sometimes more depending on the work and conditions. That doesn’t mean adding an arbitrary percentage to every winter job. It means looking at the project, the schedule, and the conditions your crews are likely to face.
When your men produce less work in the same amount of time, your labor cost goes up.
Make sure your estimate does too.
Carter School of Estimating
