Turnaround

Remodeling estimate turnaround time

Ask a room full of remodelers how long a bid takes and you get everything from same day to three weeks. The spread has almost nothing to do with how fast anybody writes.

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Nobody agrees on a number, and that is the finding

Search this and page one is forums. Electricians on one board arguing about turnaround for a small residential estimate, builders on another asking how long to return a bid, a homeowner question site asking how soon after the walkthrough she should expect something.

Hundreds of replies and no settled answer anywhere. That is the finding rather than a hole in the research. There is no standard because the clock is measuring something different for each man answering.

Some are timing from the phone call. Some from the walkthrough. Some from the day the last sub finally got back to them. Three different stopwatches, which is why the thread never converges and why the honest answer has to start by saying which clock you mean.

The writing is not what takes the days

Here is the part that gets missed. Almost nobody loses three days writing an estimate.

The sit down part, taking your measurements and your notes and building the thing out against your cost book, is a couple of hours for a bath and an evening for a kitchen. With templates and a price book already built it is less than that.

What takes a week and a half is everything that has to happen before you can sit down. The biggest single piece of it is finding an hour when you and the homeowner are both standing in the same room.

That matters because it tells you which tools can help you and which cannot. Most of what is sold as faster estimating is aimed at the one evening that was never the problem.

Where a week and a half actually goes

Day one, the call

She calls. You talk for ten minutes. You offer to come out and look at it.

Days two to six, the calendar

This is the real one. You are on jobs during the day and she works too. You offer Thursday, she offers Saturday, you land on the Tuesday after. Five days gone and nobody did anything wrong.

Day seven, the visit

Forty minutes in the house, an hour and a half of truck around it.

Days seven to nine, the subs

You send the scope to a plumber and an electrician. One answers that night. The other is on a job and answers Thursday.

Day nine, you write it

Two hours at your own kitchen table. The part everybody thinks is the delay.

Day ten, she reads it

By which point, if you were the third company she called, somebody else has had a signed contract for four days.

What actually cuts the time

If the delay lives in the calendar then faster estimating software does not fix it. A tool that saves you ninety minutes of writing on day nine does not touch days two to six at all.

Three things move the number and only three. Fewer things that have to be scheduled. Subs who can price from a written scope instead of a second visit. And a price book that is already built, so writing the estimate is assembly rather than research.

The scheduled visit is the heavy one, because it is the only step where two people's calendars have to intersect. Every other step is one person's work queue, and work queues can be worked at night. Remove that intersection and ten days becomes two, not because anybody worked faster but because nobody waited.

Three honest ways to take days out

Get the room before the visit

She captures it on her own phone from a link, on her own evening. No two calendars to line up. You see the room the same night she calls.

Send subs a scope, not an address

A plumber can price from a written scope with dimensions and photographs. He cannot price from come and look at it, and that version costs you his calendar on top of yours.

Build the cost book once

Most of what feels like estimating is looking up what you charge. A price book already built turns an evening into an hour, every time, for the rest of the year.

Common questions

What is a normal turnaround for a remodeling estimate?

Measured from the first call, one to two weeks is typical for a kitchen or a bath, and most of that is the wait for the site visit. Measured from the walkthrough, two to five days is the common answer. Say which clock you are quoting, because the homeowner is timing from the call.

Does being faster actually win more jobs?

Being first is worth more than being fast. The advantage is not that your bid arrives quickly, it is that it arrives while she is still comparing instead of after she has decided. Once somebody else has a signature, speed is worth nothing.

Should I tell a homeowner how long it will take?

Yes, and give her a date rather than a duration. A week sounds like seven days to her and five working days to you. Say you will have it to her by Thursday, then do.

Why do some contractors take three weeks?

Usually because the estimate keeps sliding down the list behind work that is already paying. It is not a work ethic problem. It is an unpaid task competing with paid ones, and it loses every time it competes.

Is a same day estimate a red flag?

For a full remodel a same day number is a range rather than a price, and it should be labeled that way. For a scope you have built dozens of times against a current cost book, same day is just a well organized contractor.

How long should I wait before following up on a bid I sent?

Two or three days, then once more a week later. If she has gone quiet after a detailed estimate she has usually either signed with somebody else or stalled on money, and both of those are worth knowing rather than guessing at.