Estimator

Know what a job costs before you promise a price.

Your Estimator measures the work from the plans and the site, prices it from your own book at your own labour rate, and writes down exactly what is in the number and what is not. Every quantity is traceable to where it was measured, so anyone can check it.

It stops the bid that wins by forgetting something. A scope it cannot measure never gets quietly rounded into the price. It becomes a named allowance with its assumption written into the bid, or it is excluded in words a customer can read. That one habit is the difference between a job that makes money and a job bought with the profit from two others.

It tells you the truth about margin. Markup on cost and margin on price are different numbers, and it reports both, every time. When a bid comes in under your target it says so instead of absorbing it.

It decides what not to bid. A job the company cannot build, in a place it is not licensed, for someone who paid late last time: it recommends the no-bid and records the reason, so an afternoon goes to the invitation that could actually be won.

It closes the loop. Every bid gets chased to an answer and the answer gets recorded with the number. When jobs close, it compares what each unit actually cost against what it estimated and proposes the correction to your book with the evidence attached.

Works alongside the seat that prices change orders once the job has started, and the seat that turns a won bid into a permit application.