Find it. Inspect it. Bid it. Win it.
For commercial roofing contractors
You already have an estimating budget. Here's what yours costs.
The hours that go into a commercial bid never arrive as an invoice, so the cost sits outside your job costing. Put four of your own numbers in and see the year. About thirty seconds, and nothing is stored unless you ask us for a copy.
Thirty seconds
What one commercial bid actually costs you
Rough is fine. You're looking for the order of magnitude rather than the cent.
Measuring, takeoff, pricing, writing it up, and the back and forth after it goes out.
A US commercial roofing estimator averages $81,378 a year, which lands near $49 an hour once you add payroll tax and benefits and divide by 2,080 hours. If the bids end up on you rather than on an estimator, use what an hour of your own time is worth instead. It's usually higher.
Count everything that got priced, including the ones you already knew were long shots.
If you don't track it, count back over your last ten commercial bids and use that.
The amber part is not waste. It is the cost of being in the running, and it is the part that never lands on a job cost report.
Change anything on the left and these move. Nothing is sent anywhere while you do it.
Your four figures and the arithmetic behind them, written out. No mailing list. Or and skip it entirely.
What goes into one bid
Everything that has to get priced, every time
Not a template, and not a price list. It's the set of things a low slope bid has to account for somewhere, whether the job is a coating, a recover or a tear-off.
The roof itself
- The existing system, and whether it comes off
- Deck type and any deck repair allowance
- Slope, drainage and any build-up needed to fix it
- The new system, by layer, to a spec
- How it is attached or adhered, and at what rate
- Repairs needed before the new system goes on
- Wind and code requirements for the property
The details
- Perimeter and parapet flashing, to measured height
- Curbs, measured rather than counted
- Penetrations: pipes, drains, scuppers and hatches
- Equipment, and whether it has to be lifted
- Terminations, sealants and transitions
- Edge metal, coping and counter flashing
- Gutters, downspouts and collector boxes
- Walkway protection and traffic areas
Everything that isn't roof
- Labor, by crew and by day
- Lift, telehandler and crane time
- Fuel, travel and lodging on a distant job
- Freight, priced by load rather than per unit
- Tax on material, at the job's jurisdiction
- Consumables
- Warranty, and whose it is
- Overhead and margin
- Unit rates for the change orders you know are coming
Most of that list repeats job to job. Working through it is where the hours in the calculator above actually go. The commercial jobs that never get worked through at all have a number of their own.
The questions behind the arithmetic
What people ask about bid cost
What does it cost to produce one commercial bid?
There's no invoice for it, so it sits outside job costing. Take the hours one bid takes and multiply by the loaded hourly cost of whoever does it. Then multiply that by the bids you send in a year. The calculator above does it on your own four numbers.
The hours are the part people underestimate. Measuring, takeoff, pricing, writing it up, and the back and forth after it goes out all count, and the last one is the easiest to forget.
What does a commercial roofing estimator cost per hour?
A US commercial roofing estimator averages $81,378 a year. Add payroll tax and benefits, divide by 2,080 working hours, and that lands near $49 an hour. If the bids land on you instead of an estimator, use what an hour of your own time is worth. It's usually higher.
That figure is a national average, so treat it as a starting point rather than your number. The field above takes whatever you put in it.
Why count the bids I lost?
Because they cost the same to produce as the ones you win. A bid you win pays for itself inside the job. A bid you lose is hours nobody billed for. The calculator splits your figure into both, so you can see which side most of it sits on.
That split is usually the part worth showing somebody else.
Does the calculator store what I put in?
No. The arithmetic runs in your browser and nothing leaves the page. If you want the figures back as one page you can keep, there's a form under the calculator that asks for an email address. That is the only point at which anything is sent anywhere.
What does CleverIntel do about any of this?
CleverIntel is commercial roofing software for flat and low slope work. It prices the roof off a negotiated national account, publishes the bid under your logo, and takes the signature. The hours it takes off you are the arithmetic, the price lookups and the write-up.
It starts one step earlier too, with the commercial properties near you worth calling in the first place. The eight steps are set out here.
Where the hours go instead
Take those hours back, and get more to bid
That is what producing bids by hand costs you. Here is what the same year looks like with CleverIntel behind it.
Find it
The properties worth a call
Scan a ZIP, upload a property list, or look up one address. Commercial roofs come back ranked by condition, each measured from the air and sent under your logo.
Inspect it
Eyes on the roof
Order a drone scan, standard or thermal, when you want to see a roof before you commit a number to it. It lands on that property with the rest of the job.
Bid it
Priced and signed
The engine prices the roof line by line, publishes it under your logo, and takes a signature on a tablet or through a private link.
Buy it
Like a national account
Material on the job prices off an account we negotiate with the manufacturers. No volume tier to reach first and no rebate to wait on at the end of the year.
Order it
Instant takeoff
Approve the bid and the quantities become a material order. You name who it goes to in the portal, and our supply side can take it if you want us to.
Win it
Insurance review
Start one from inside the bid, and a claims specialist we work with picks it up with the bid and your documents already attached.
The fuller version
See it on one of your own roofs
Twenty minutes, and you watch your own market get scanned, a real commercial property get priced line by line, and the bid go out signed. Your four figures come over written out, and a time comes back with them.
Built by people who price commercial roofs.
CleverIntel™ came out of pricing real low slope work, which is why the questions it asks you are the ones you would ask standing on the roof.
Got it.
Your one page comes back from a person's inbox, usually inside one business day. If you'd rather just talk, say so in the reply and we'll sort a time.