Reducing Preventable Errors

This one's a little embarrassing for me, it is based on what do you do when you make a mistake. The simple answer is that you keep moving forward and acknowledge your mistakes repair what you can repair and move on. We had scheduled an online class and had run a test class the day before that turned into a disaster, my audio drivers crashed just prior to starting the class and for the first time I had to cancel a class – minutes before it was to start – this was an embarrassing experience. The intention was right we wanted to help contractors by showing them a few things to make their lives easier. What I wound up doing was to waste their time. I cancelled have repaired the problem and plan to run another test and then to hold the class on another day.

I received an email newsletter from Wes Hopper who is someone that I subscribe to his web site is www.dailygratitude.com, he has a daily newsletter that I often find helpful. An item that was in today’s newsletter "All great accomplishments require 4 things: A dream, action, patience, and a whole bunch of miracles." Mike Dooley.

This quote mirrors what I have been talking to contractors for the past several years. My belief is to have a business plan for your business, followed by a systematic approach to running your business in a proactive manner. This proactive manner will reduce the amount of reactive time spent which will relieve stress and often times increase profits. I then want a systematic approach that is repeatable for every estimate. With these good estimates the task now becomes a matter of good project management procedures. Below are some of the steps I take to assure both estimating and project management techniques are systematic and repeatable.

Project Management Business plan Action plan (to do list) Marketing Bid Log Pre-bid evaluation Estimating Bid Review Labor burden and overhead calculator Value engineering Cap sheet (summary of bid) Proposals Negotiations Contracts Purchase Orders Submittals Scheduling Job start-up meetings Time sheets, field and office Office productivity Field Productivity Material delivery Change order estimating and proposals Job closeout Warranty letters

Electrical Estimating Business plan Action plan (to do list) Bid Log Pre-bid evaluation Take off sheets Sample RFI Manual takeoff (We utilize a very similar method for computer estimating) Manual extension Labor burden and overhead calculator Cap sheet (summary of bid) Scope / Proposal letter Pre-proposal bid review Time sheets, (why they are important to you as an estimator) Change order estimating and proposals

We hope these items are available to you.

Our wish for you is for a happier more prosperous New Year - if possible we would like to help you achieve that goal.

Any input to these ideas are more then welcome.

Thank you for reading ours.