Florida Elevator Business Pricing & Estimating Guide
Build accurate, defensible, and profitable elevator estimates by calculating labor, payroll burden, materials, freight, travel, equipment, permits, inspections, subcontractors, overhead, risk, contingency, gross profit, payment terms, and the full cost of delivering the promised work.
Price the Complete Job
Include every expected labor hour, material, trip, permit, inspection, rental, subcontractor, administrative task, risk allowance, and closeout requirement.
Separate Cost from Price
Cost is what the company spends to perform the work. Price must recover that cost plus overhead, risk, and profit.
Use Written Assumptions
Define scope, exclusions, access conditions, customer responsibilities, payment terms, permit responsibility, and what will trigger a change order.
Why Pricing and Estimating Discipline Matters
Elevator work can involve specialized labor, expensive components, restricted access, inspections, emergency response, long lead times, manufacturer-specific requirements, subcontractors, and commercial payment delays. A small estimating error can become a large loss when multiplied across labor hours, material purchases, mobilizations, or project duration.
A reliable estimating system helps the company decide which opportunities are financially responsible, communicate the scope clearly, compare estimated and actual results, improve future pricing, protect cash flow, and avoid accepting work that cannot produce adequate gross profit.
Build Every Estimate from the Same Cost Structure
Standardized estimating reduces omissions and makes job-performance reviews more meaningful. Each proposal should use the same core categories even when the service type or project size changes.
Direct Labor
Field hours, supervision, project management, estimating, travel, setup, testing, documentation, cleanup, and closeout.
Direct Materials
Parts, components, freight, taxes, consumables, special orders, return risk, handling, and supplier deposits.
Project Costs
Permits, inspections, rentals, disposal, parking, tolls, lodging, subcontractors, temporary protection, and site-specific requirements.
Overhead, Risk, and Profit
Company overhead, contingency, warranty exposure, financing cost, collection risk, and target gross profit.
Establish a Job-Costing Foundation
Estimating becomes more accurate when the company records what completed jobs actually consumed. Assign labor, materials, freight, permits, rentals, subcontractors, travel, callbacks, and other direct costs to the correct project or service call.
Track Labor by Activity
Separate productive field labor from travel, setup, diagnosis, waiting, supervision, training, documentation, purchasing, and callbacks.
Track Materials Completely
Include freight, tax, handling, consumables, rush charges, restocking fees, nonreturnable items, and damaged or incorrectly ordered parts.
Compare Estimate to Actual
Review estimated hours, actual hours, estimated material, actual material, gross profit, change orders, delays, and the cause of every major variance.
Calculate the True Cost of Labor
The employee's hourly wage is only one part of labor cost. The company must also recover payroll taxes, workers' compensation, benefits, paid time, training, uniforms, tools, phones, vehicles, supervision, administrative support, and nonbillable hours.
Base Compensation
Hourly wages, salary, overtime, shift premiums, emergency-call compensation, bonuses, commissions, and paid travel.
Payroll Burden
Employer taxes, workers' compensation, unemployment costs, benefits, paid leave, retirement contributions, and insurance.
Employee Support Cost
Vehicle, fuel, phone, tablet, software, uniforms, tools, PPE, training, credential maintenance, recruiting, and supervision.
Calculate Realistic Billable Hours
Do not divide annual employee cost by every paid hour. Technicians also spend time traveling, loading, attending meetings, training, completing documentation, maintaining vehicles, waiting for access, handling callbacks, and performing other necessary nonbillable activities.
Start with Paid Hours
Calculate the employee's total expected paid hours for the year.
Subtract Paid Leave
Remove holidays, vacation, sick time, and other paid absences.
Subtract Nonbillable Time
Remove training, meetings, shop work, administration, vehicle care, unbilled travel, and expected downtime.
Use Productive Capacity
Divide total annual labor-related cost by realistic billable hours, not by theoretical availability.
Develop the Required Labor Rate
The labor rate should recover direct employee cost, allocated company overhead, risk, and profit. Different rates may be needed for standard service, emergency response, overtime, highly specialized work, project supervision, inspection support, travel, and minimum service charges.
Direct Labor Cost
Begin with the fully burdened cost of the technician or crew based on realistic productive hours.
Overhead Allocation
Add the portion of rent, insurance, administration, software, vehicles, marketing, accounting, and other overhead that billable work must recover.
Profit and Risk
Add a margin for business profit, uncertainty, warranty exposure, collection risk, and future reinvestment.