Commercial Estimators

You should post your resume on our website, no charge. We send 4-5 dozen of employers there everyday.

The best way to talk directly to estimators is at an ASPE meeting.  The meetings are open to all.  Introduce yourself to the members there and they will probably introduce you to the entire group at the opening of the meeting and give you a chance to tell a little about yourself.  Let them know you are available.  Go to the National ASPE web site and look up Chapters to find one closest to you.  The meetings are casual and comfortable, no pressure.  I often talk to a VP in Pre-Construction of Turner Construction or a sales rep for a local composite metal siding supplier that is a 2 person company.  At the meeting we are all the same.

Edward and Quality,

Thanks, 

                              I will post my resume on this site and attend a meeting this month. The closest chapter is about 3 hours away. But since Quality invited me, I will make the trip to see if I can get some more feedback. It will be a welcome change from the short conversations I get from HR folks.

This tread has been very educational for me.

Now I understand why is difficult for me to go from residential to commercial. I live in Edmonton, Alberta (Canada).

I've been working as residential estimator in Edmonton for the last 4 years. I started in Custom houses, single family houses and now in multi family buildings.

I have tried to make the jump to comercial (looking for career development and new challenges) but I want to know why comercial is supposed to be so different. 

 As the time goes by, my salary increases and I become more used to it. It becomes more difficult to go commercial because they will not pay me what I'm earning right now. They might think I have to be re-train? 

I'm trying to get certified with my local estimator's association (I'm currently a certified civil engineering technologist). I applied couple months ago, they will probably send me to take courses which I'm in the most interest in taking to improve myself.

Granrey,

I wish I didn't have to give you this advice.

            Based on my experience, there are very few crossover opportunities to commercial work right now. The reasons for this situation, are probably a result of the economy and the difference in the two sectors. I spoke with an old associate recently that had a 6 month battle to find work in residential project management. He was fortunate to find another residential postion three states away from his previous job. He has a lot of NAHB certifications and been in the housing industry for a lot of years. He mentioned his lack of success with commercial positions too. He said the employers/recruiters would not talk to him with his residential background. There is a bias, fair or not, against candidates with no commercial experience.

My advice...for what it is worth: 

If you only have four years experience as an estimator, then you should take the courses for any certification, and move to commercial estimating. As I have said before , there are far more opportunities for professional estimators in the industrial, commercial and civil sector, then in the residential industry.

IMO, the differences between residential and commercial estimating:

The project dollar volume is much higher. The most expensive sales/buyout estimate I performed, had a hardcost of about $750,000. Most of my recent sales estimates were in the $250,000 to $350,000 hardcost range...per unit. A million dollar project in commercial work is probably not considered a high risk.

The residential industry usually customizes their divisions of work to fit the local methods for building homes. Correct me if I am wrong, but even light commercial bidders use the CSI MasterFormat for specifications and estimates? It makes sense, since it is organized in an industry accepted manner for engineers, architects, estimators, and project managers. As a residential estimator, we used three different estimating breakdowns in 15 years for estimating homes on the computer. Most of the small residential builders which are small operations, use a simple spreadsheet for a sales estimate. They use lumber yards and vendors for material quotes. They also handle their AP functions, by paying from invoices, rather then using a purchase order system. They pay their bills from monthly statements, rather then spending a lot of time on job costing their expenses. The largest homebuilders have the revenues to employ specialized estimators. But I live in an area of about 650,000 folks, and we do not have any of the big homebuilders in our market. There might be three or four homebuilders that have estimators/purchasers. But I may be overstating that number. The commercial folks have several types of estimates...five if I remember correctly? There were two kinds of residential sales estimates I performed; ballpark or detailed.  

As other posters have mentioned, the commercial industry gets quality drug free hourly crafts. The residential industry relies on subcontractors. They hire the folks they need without a lot of requirements, except for attendence. The commercial contractors emphasize safety. The homebuilders sites have walkboards across unfilled garages without safety rails, ditches with no yellow tape, no fences to protect the site from theft/injuries and no OSHA signs posted.

The commercial builders use plan services/exchanges to look for work, to bid on. I am sure the best commercial contractors get their opportunities to work on projects, without bidding. There is no clear defined bidding method for residential work. The builder might be contacted by the customer directly or a real-estate agent might bring a builder a set of plans for an estimate. But there is no service in my region, that sends a residential builder the customers plans for an estimate. There are no specifications in residential bid packages, unless the customer creates the specification sheets themselves. The architects provide construction documents. The residential customers buy stock plans or pay for a residential designer to draw the plans. But there are no other documents for the residential estimator to use for third party plan estimates. I worked for a builder that used their own standard specifications, unless the alternates were described, when a proposal was presented to a customer. It usually irritated a lot of customers that wanted to pick and choose their own specifications on the bids.

The commercial estimators use excepted construction standards, such as Means. The best residential plans actually have usable sections and details on them. A lot of them do not have these details.

The developers use the same skills in developing commercial, industrial, and residential properties. So if you can pick up some civil estimating skill sets, you will have some valuable training. 

IMO, The residential industry's chief player is the small builder, despite what you see about the largest builders. So the emphasis in the residential industry is on survival these days. 

Mike 

Mike,

I decided to read your post twice so I can reply properly.

Dollarwise, residential varies a lot. I have estimated houses over 2 million dollars. I have also estimated apartments way cheapter than that too. I have worked on buildings with 186 suites.

What you have said about the breakdown is really true. I have worked in 3 places and in all of them they were using their own way of breakingdown estimates and specs. On my first job we tried to use MasterFormat, Uniformat and my boss would not acept them because he could not understand the format (he wanted to see them, they way we built our houses, as you said). At the same time he wanted the company to have its estimates and specs on MasterFormat or Uniformat. So we were going around in circles. That's why I left that company.

This problem is really bad because everybody in residential has its own idea about how to breakdown estimates and specs. Which is fustrating for me.

Regarding safety. you are right too. My company has sent me to take safety courses, because we want the company to be certified (I took them all already). However, most of the people in residential are very ignorant towards safety or too lazzy. But things are changing,  safety regulations are becoming tougher in Canada.

Regarding P.O.  only 1 of the 3 companies had a good system of paying invoices. They had timberline with accounting interface.

Regarding trades, that's true also. Trades are not good.

My goal next year is to go into commercial. I might have to take a cut on my paycheck but I have to do it. 

I think there is a story that I should share.

One time, we hired two sitesuperintendants from the commercial sector to build couple of apartment buildings in our company. Well, we assumed those guys should not need too much traninng because they are coming from commercial right?

Well, these guys were calling me every day to the office asking me questions about details on the drawings. The calls became so time consuming that the senior estimator complained to the construction manager because I was not doing my other duties. The manager told them to consult each other before making a call to the office. 

 They would still call me often and I could feel them all talking when one of them was on the phone with me.

One day, they call me about something none of them knew what it was. I could not undertand what they were asking me, because the detail they were refering to was too simple and could not see any weird symbol on it. I was telling them: "I only see windows on that location, is that symbol close to the windows?"  They were repplying that there are no windows close to the symbol they were inquiring about.

Therefore, I told them to make a copy of the drawing, and send me a fax. I could not believe what the question was. They could not recognize a metal window on a drawing.

I informed the senior estimator and he wanted to inform the president of the company about it. Well, I said "no, let's play a game. If I can find somebody on this office that does not know about this symbol, we will not talk to the president". Keep in mind, we were including anybody in the company, accountants, clerks, recepcionists, janitors, etc.

Well, we started the experiment. We asked our construction clerk, she knew what it was. Two accountans knew too. The third accountant could not identify what it was. Therefore, we ended the game and forgave them.

In my experience, Sitesuperintendant coming to residential have a hard time in residential. my hypotesisis is that commercial is a universe to big and diversed. Therefore, you don't do the same things everyday. In residential, things don't change that often. Commercial guys when looking a detail might see many things on it because they have a very wide experience. Residential only see one thing because that's the only thing they have seen every time.  

Granrey,

            I am trying out a online plan service software. It sure makes it apparent to me, that the biggest difference between residential and commercial work, is how accessible the work is to all the contractors. The flow of possible work in the housing sector flows through the realtor or homebuilders sales person. In residential work the plans and clients are not available for new work through a plan room. So the sales folks efforts...or lack of efforts can choke off the supply of work.  The real-estate industry can control the process for building contract homes.

In commercial work, the estimator or project manager can pick up the plans to bid on them or take-off their portion of the work online...paperless.  

As I have said, it all depends.

In condo buildings. The drawings are usually managed by the estimator/purchaser. Usually, updates, addendums are sent to the trades and sitesuperintendant by him (paper or digital).

In houses, updates are rare. Unless is on custom houses in which the owners are always changing stuff to satisfy other people rather than themselfs. I remember a guy trying to satisfy a lover and an oriental person trying to move the stairs because they were facing the front door (the wealth would leave from the stairs to the front door)

 Regading drawings, the best way to manage drawings is to store them in a "virtual" location in which everybody involved has access to   it. A virtual location could be a internet site or a internet server.

I still find some people are afraid of computers. They know how to build a highriser but do not know how to turn on a PC.

 I went to a conference last spring in which somebody was proposing an "info booth". Really, high tech but as I said, if you can have the info on a virtual place, everybody has access to it.

Regarding bids, I think is better to put buildings on tender  trough your local construction association. I have done it and it is really good. They will put the drawings for you on a virtual place for members only plus the drawings will be too on their plans room.