[Waterocker]

Hey everyone!

I have a very large commercial job I am bidding on. I have about 9,134 plants to plant and 36 trees. The plants are 5gal & 1 gal. There are 8,818 1gal plants in that 9,134. I was thinking cost + 50% then add my cost and margins on top of that... I dont want to over bid this... Anyone ever do planting job this size? We also will be installing the irrigation. All the plant beds are Netafim/inline drip. We will be doing the finish grade in the plant beds. Ill have at least 1 if not 2 mini-ex's on this site and a skidsteer or 2 not sure yet. Any advice would be great.

[Paul]

For 36 trees? I hope you have the labor for the one gallon plants. A good crew can get in 700 to 800 one gallon plants a day if they know what they are doing any have some one to set them out right. Pricing it thats harder, what is your overhead, how skilled is your crew? Are you having all the plants deliviered? This could be a $70K job or $150K job! So few details how can we really get a good handle on it.

[Green4Me]

will using drip irrigation mean a drip line to every plant? That will be a significant cost to irrigate. Your pricing method does not seem to have a sound foundation as to how you develop your costs. Go research the bidding and estimating threads and you will see a system for pricing.

[Waterocker]

I can have 4-8 guys on this job. The inline drip is apart of the irrigation bid. My crews are skilled in commercial landscape as well as high-end residential. And by all means Yes im having those plants delivered.

[GLAN]

Honestly........commercial bids of that nature go to the lowest bidder.

Most lowest bidders.......are their own suppliers......they have nurseries, they grow, have the buying power and contacts to get plants at the lowest possible cost.

If you want this job.

don't mark up to much and don't over load the labor costs.

[familyguy]

its been a while since i posted but i have to say that glan is right.

we bid 2 jobs over the winter for a building company we have gotten hooked in with. they are a large outfit and have large work to go with it.

1 was a police facility, the other was a housing development (we didn't have 2 much interest in that 1)

the low bidder on both was the nursery and landscaping company that we buy some of our plants from. their numbers we (in both cases) 1/2 of ours give or take 15%.

the system we used was to estimate our labor, for example 1 week with 5 guys and 1 backhoe, and 1 truck, etc = x

plant cost + 20% = y

x + y = z and make sure z was in the ballpark of = each plant x 2.75 (to check our numbers.)

so, glan is absolutely on the money. low bidders with their own plants are a pretty tough act to follow.

[Waterocker]

Thanks for the info guys