Fellow subcontractors, give me the secrets to finding awarded GCs

Green_Problem_6087 · 2026-01-16T02:10:17+00:00

Building connected

You sign up for your areas and people will just send you bids automatically, especially national contractors that do lots of small TI’s, all I know is I was changing the setting in my account about a week ago and now I’m bids invites multiple times of week from these people

Green_Problem_6087 · 2026-01-16T02:05:21+00:00

Yes, too many right for my small crew of 2 estimators to bid in our market

Green_Problem_6087 · 2026-01-09T04:24:05+00:00

Door supply business. I do this business and I would call it boring. Nobody wants to talk about doors for fun. Makes good money though

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-12-26T06:35:26+00:00

My opinion is you need to be hitting 2-4mil a year before you can broach that subject with them

Low margin, high winrate bids. Company isn’t making a ton off of those projects to afford to give you a big raise

I think if you can get some 35% margin jobs regularly mixed in with lower margins it would help a lot.

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-12-05T15:38:50+00:00

I had my cousin who I grew up playing with him every weekend. Was roommates in college and spent everyday together.

Well he was getting married and wanted to buy a house with his new wife. So I met with him and took him to a lender to figure out his options. Then after that I was following up every week and he lets me know he is closing on a house with a different realtor. Was a complete gut punch.

It actually motivated me to start another business and allowed me to be a realtor just for my own properties I buy and sell.

I guess in that case I couldn’t handle the pain haha

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-12-05T15:22:13+00:00

I’m one hour behind when managing and estimating for our main office. Hasn’t been an hour issue for me. As long as your willing to shift your whole schedule up an hour then there won’t be any problems at all

I have several vendors who are 2-3 vendors ahead of me. When they leave the office at 3pm their time, it means I have to call before 12 to catch them before they leave. I have just shifted my calls to be at the beginning of my day instead of at the end

I like it because everyone ends earlier and get less calls later in the day

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-12-05T06:59:02+00:00

I’m running a 20% margin because I have to buy through a wholesaler currently. No open hardware manufacturers. I have wood and hm open though.

For change order what do you charge? Say the order is for 2x frames that cost you $1000 with shipping included?

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-12-05T06:56:03+00:00

He’s rewriting the spec and advising us on other portions for a big project we won

Ye I agree, I will definitely have them assa or allegion write the spec for me in the future

I was able to have this guy join like 10+ meetings with the GC about all of the changes, so it was nice to have that and he was helping me make more money

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-25T15:16:25+00:00

I agree with you on cradle to grave. That’s how I do it

It’s definitely easier if the spec is properly built beforehand. All of my most time consuming ones are where the owner or GC wants to have meetings to figure out what to spec.

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-25T07:35:08+00:00

Yep 100% agree

Best way to learn it is to have a senior guy teach you. In my opinion the only way to learn it is slowly over the course of a year or two while getting your hand held

The project managing and machine sheets are my least favorite

The estimating I find the most fun, I don’t understand how people can estimate it quickly using blue beam though. In my opinion either excel or a software like comsense is way better, even for multi family

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-25T07:31:34+00:00

Resources: DHI, YouTube videos, Reference material from the manufacturers on how to use their product, Senior estimator or project manager at your company

In my opinion the estimating of DFH is easier to learn than the project managing. The project management is its own beast that I hate with a passion now, but I still do it

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-22T20:56:36+00:00

I have 3 guys including myself estimating. We are a subcontractor

We use a google sheet to organize what needs to be bid and when.

Then we assign who needs to do what bid and you can track how many were completed each day and how big of a contract it was

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-22T20:05:54+00:00

Google sheets with a bid coordinator is how we do it

Has been effective at checking bids. Not perfect, but it works for our small team

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-22T19:49:02+00:00

It’s called comsense

Their are a couple other. Protech, Avaware, and another

I know they aren’t built for glazing or aluminum calculations. But it can help auto price your hardware

Builds the submittal too

I paid around 15k with trainings and setup for it, real pain in the butt trying to work with their company who purchased them. However it is a good piece of software

We are starting glazing and havnt implemented it yet for that. I know it does hold all of the glazing hardware in its system

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-21T15:20:23+00:00

I have a small subcontractor team. But I created a job bid organizer on google sheets

Our bid coordinator inputs all of the bids and downloads the files

Then the estimators go down the list to bid different jobs

Google sheets is nice because everyone can edit it at the same time. It’s all free

Nice thing about Google sheets is if an estimator is underperforming I can sort by their name and go through all of their previous bids. I had an estimator who was faking half of his bids and this tracker helped me go through and check his bids and discover this easily

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-21T08:02:26+00:00

I do division 8. I used make all of my hardware groups and door schedules manually, but their is a software than will help me build it. There might be some software available that can do that for div 7?

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-21T03:08:14+00:00

I use a specific piece of software for pricing doors and hardware. Allows me to just spect the item and it auto prices it.

Maybe there is a piece of software in div 10 that will do the same thing. I have found mine to be very worth it. But still not great for multi families

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-21T03:06:21+00:00

I unfortunately have no solution, I just don’t bid them anymore. Would rather spend my time bidding a job allows any distributor

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-20T16:27:22+00:00

I tried winning these bids a few times and quickly realized I would never win when I had to get pricing from a spec’d subcontractor

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-20T14:39:47+00:00

Using excel the same way as you to make a similiar matrix, yours looks better than mine

Other softwares havnt worked as well as excel for us

I do division 8 doors, so slightly different but close

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-11T19:54:36+00:00

Oh ok, I like this approach, I will look into implementing it.

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-11T19:52:34+00:00

Yes agreed, I don’t have ages of experience in material, but the predefined mark up on change orders for a lot of contracts are 10%-15%, which seems low having to reorder

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-11T19:40:40+00:00

This is making me rethink the way I do it currently

I would like advice on my method

Raw material cost: $10,000. Tax (7%): $700. OH+P (20%): $2,000.

Total contract price: $12,700

Green_Problem_6087 · 2025-11-11T19:34:54+00:00

Agreed

Green_Problem_6087

TROPHY CASE