lbtcadmin
12-11-2007, 12:09 PM
Lawn & Landscape Job Time Information
www.nilssonbooks.com (http://www.nilssonbooks.com/)
How long will the job take ?
No matter how difficult it may be to prepare job bid contracts, you should know that it's impossible, absolutely impossible to bid on a contract without knowing time. I don't mean knowing time by looking at your pocket watch, I mean time for every part of the work. This is commonly referred to as knowing the scope of the work. How long does it take to mow grass, dig a ****, plant a tree, prune a shrub, edge a sidewalk, travel to and from the worksite, get the equipment and vehicles ready to roll each morning? And when you take a look at the hundreds of tasks being performed, that alone clues you in to the fact that there are hundreds of times you can be wrong. That's why I said it's impossible to develop a contract bid without knowing time and the scope of the work.
Because of the tedious nature of knowing time, lots of folks just guess at it, and then use those guesses to prepare a job bid. It's not necessary to do that, and it's what I consider a form of "financial suicide". Why? Several reasons. The first is that if you're going to take the time and trouble to bid a job, the outcome should be a price that is not higher or lower than it has to be to produce an adequate profit. Here, we abandon the hit or miss approach by using intelligent work times ... or call them time standards assigned to labor hours and labor tasks. Standards are the average time it takes to perform a task, and to complete the work. The best standards of course are those that are proven because these give you a high level of confidence in the outcomes for pricing and production purposes. Proven time standards come with their own set of high confidence factors that you feel comfortable in using.
If you're going to do it often ... time it.
The most common standards to want if you do maintenance is the time it takes to mow lawns. That's because about 50% of the total time spent annually on an average customer account will be for mowing. If you don't know mowing times, that one thing will distort your bid price, your production time planning, and equipment allocations unless you "guess lucky". But why guess? All you need to do is measure for the scope of the work, adjust for worksite variables, assign a level of difficulty factor and then time ... the time ... it takes to mow using various sized equipment. Apply that information? No problem. First, larger areas are best mowed using high production equipment, with lessor productivity as you descend down, down to smaller and smaller lawn areas. When you have the square footage, you have the scope of the work. Using mowing tables depending on machine, then indicates the average mowing time. That's pretty straight forward. You visit the site and divide it into the approriate mowing category, and maybe end up with two or three different sized mowers needed for the job. On almost any site, you're likely to need several sized mowers if you are to produce the job using the fastest and best production method.
For example a site may require a rider to mow 50,000 square feet, a walk behind mower to mow 30,000 square feet, and a trim mower to take care of the smaller, tighter areas of 5,000 square feet. When you measure the site, you simply separate the areas measured into the right mower size category, rather than coming away only knowing that you have a total of 85,000 square to mow. Having that information and using it with a production table tells you how long each sized mower will be needed for the job. From that info you can assign the work, establish time goals, reserve a time block for equipment, decide on the best number of workers to do the mowing, and of course come up with a cost and price for the mowing. This same approach to job measurement can be used for other items found within the work specifications ... not just mowing. All you need is the job criteria from which to measure or putting it differently, when you know quantity, you understand the scope of the work.
How much work is there?
You'll never really know until you count it all. That's the same as saying that if you want to paint a house, to know labor time and the gallons of paint needed, you need to measure the walls, trim,and other surface areas to form the criteria and basis for your estimate. From there you arrive at material costs, labor time, price and have an idea of the tooling needed for the job. Material costs are known, labor time is known, price is known, so the only other cost is the overhead dollars to cover payroll taxes, insurance, equipment depreciation, rent, telephone, and other expenses that you can break down to an hourly basis for convenience sake when bidding jobs. That information can come from your tax return or financial statement which serves as your historical cost record. Using those figures takes much of the guesswork out of the bid process and instills a greator degree of bidding confidence as you get to know and use the numbers year after year. If somebody asks you what it costs to put a man in the field for an hour, you'll know the answer. You'll also know at what rate per hour you must charge to use for your pricing strategy.
In addition to knowing cost and price, when you know job time requirements, while a job is underway, you'll have figures to use to not only check your cost budget for the work, but actual on-site experienced job times to look at and compare. Your job estimate may indicate that the total job was supposed to be completed in let's say 100 man hours, but it took 120 or it took 90. When that happens ... a variation between estimated time and actual time to complete, then you look for the reasons for the variations. You may find that your standard times need to be changed up or down to imporve their accuracy to use on all future bids.
You sell time
The business of most service businesses is that they sell time. So time should be clearly understood and tracked as a vital part of labor, production and profit management. Of course you'll have to make certain that when you assign time to a job task that you use the best production method by selecting the most efficient equipment available.
Click here: for Labor Hours Time information (http://nilssonbooks.com/job_bidding_pricing.htm#Labor Time Data Handbook)
__________________
Phil Nilsson
Nilsson Associates - Since 1975
Green Industry Consultants
Call Toll Free 1-866-280-2252
Visit The Bookstore (http://www.nilssonbooks.com/)
Since 1975 - Profit Building Ideas - For Lawn and Landscape Professionals
(http://www.nilssonbooks.com/)
www.nilssonbooks.com (http://www.nilssonbooks.com/)
How long will the job take ?
No matter how difficult it may be to prepare job bid contracts, you should know that it's impossible, absolutely impossible to bid on a contract without knowing time. I don't mean knowing time by looking at your pocket watch, I mean time for every part of the work. This is commonly referred to as knowing the scope of the work. How long does it take to mow grass, dig a ****, plant a tree, prune a shrub, edge a sidewalk, travel to and from the worksite, get the equipment and vehicles ready to roll each morning? And when you take a look at the hundreds of tasks being performed, that alone clues you in to the fact that there are hundreds of times you can be wrong. That's why I said it's impossible to develop a contract bid without knowing time and the scope of the work.
Because of the tedious nature of knowing time, lots of folks just guess at it, and then use those guesses to prepare a job bid. It's not necessary to do that, and it's what I consider a form of "financial suicide". Why? Several reasons. The first is that if you're going to take the time and trouble to bid a job, the outcome should be a price that is not higher or lower than it has to be to produce an adequate profit. Here, we abandon the hit or miss approach by using intelligent work times ... or call them time standards assigned to labor hours and labor tasks. Standards are the average time it takes to perform a task, and to complete the work. The best standards of course are those that are proven because these give you a high level of confidence in the outcomes for pricing and production purposes. Proven time standards come with their own set of high confidence factors that you feel comfortable in using.
If you're going to do it often ... time it.
The most common standards to want if you do maintenance is the time it takes to mow lawns. That's because about 50% of the total time spent annually on an average customer account will be for mowing. If you don't know mowing times, that one thing will distort your bid price, your production time planning, and equipment allocations unless you "guess lucky". But why guess? All you need to do is measure for the scope of the work, adjust for worksite variables, assign a level of difficulty factor and then time ... the time ... it takes to mow using various sized equipment. Apply that information? No problem. First, larger areas are best mowed using high production equipment, with lessor productivity as you descend down, down to smaller and smaller lawn areas. When you have the square footage, you have the scope of the work. Using mowing tables depending on machine, then indicates the average mowing time. That's pretty straight forward. You visit the site and divide it into the approriate mowing category, and maybe end up with two or three different sized mowers needed for the job. On almost any site, you're likely to need several sized mowers if you are to produce the job using the fastest and best production method.
For example a site may require a rider to mow 50,000 square feet, a walk behind mower to mow 30,000 square feet, and a trim mower to take care of the smaller, tighter areas of 5,000 square feet. When you measure the site, you simply separate the areas measured into the right mower size category, rather than coming away only knowing that you have a total of 85,000 square to mow. Having that information and using it with a production table tells you how long each sized mower will be needed for the job. From that info you can assign the work, establish time goals, reserve a time block for equipment, decide on the best number of workers to do the mowing, and of course come up with a cost and price for the mowing. This same approach to job measurement can be used for other items found within the work specifications ... not just mowing. All you need is the job criteria from which to measure or putting it differently, when you know quantity, you understand the scope of the work.
How much work is there?
You'll never really know until you count it all. That's the same as saying that if you want to paint a house, to know labor time and the gallons of paint needed, you need to measure the walls, trim,and other surface areas to form the criteria and basis for your estimate. From there you arrive at material costs, labor time, price and have an idea of the tooling needed for the job. Material costs are known, labor time is known, price is known, so the only other cost is the overhead dollars to cover payroll taxes, insurance, equipment depreciation, rent, telephone, and other expenses that you can break down to an hourly basis for convenience sake when bidding jobs. That information can come from your tax return or financial statement which serves as your historical cost record. Using those figures takes much of the guesswork out of the bid process and instills a greator degree of bidding confidence as you get to know and use the numbers year after year. If somebody asks you what it costs to put a man in the field for an hour, you'll know the answer. You'll also know at what rate per hour you must charge to use for your pricing strategy.
In addition to knowing cost and price, when you know job time requirements, while a job is underway, you'll have figures to use to not only check your cost budget for the work, but actual on-site experienced job times to look at and compare. Your job estimate may indicate that the total job was supposed to be completed in let's say 100 man hours, but it took 120 or it took 90. When that happens ... a variation between estimated time and actual time to complete, then you look for the reasons for the variations. You may find that your standard times need to be changed up or down to imporve their accuracy to use on all future bids.
You sell time
The business of most service businesses is that they sell time. So time should be clearly understood and tracked as a vital part of labor, production and profit management. Of course you'll have to make certain that when you assign time to a job task that you use the best production method by selecting the most efficient equipment available.
Click here: for Labor Hours Time information (http://nilssonbooks.com/job_bidding_pricing.htm#Labor Time Data Handbook)
__________________
Phil Nilsson
Nilsson Associates - Since 1975
Green Industry Consultants
Call Toll Free 1-866-280-2252
Visit The Bookstore (http://www.nilssonbooks.com/)
Since 1975 - Profit Building Ideas - For Lawn and Landscape Professionals
(http://www.nilssonbooks.com/)