One of the challenges of moving PM and Superintendents out of G&A overhead to be charged to a project is how much time to charge in an estimate. I was at a customer’s office that had an elegant solution that I think for many companies should consider where Project Managers and/or Superintendents are not full-time on a project. Let’s be honest, estimators make a pretty wild guess when they put the amount of management time in an estimate. With enough estimates and awarded contracts, the margin of error can get fairly large and at the end of the year, the field management costs can be over-allocated or under-allocated, the latter being much more serious.

So here is a better solution. First, look at last year’s field labor costs. Divide that into the total PM’s salaries for the company for a year.

Total PM Salaries / Total Labor Costs x 100 = % PM of Labor Costs

You might want to include their vehicles in the equation so they get charged to projects too. But we would want that to be charged to the project as equipment (not labor).

Total yearly rental (with fuel) Vehicle / Total Labor Costs x 100 = % Vehicle of Labor Costs

In HeavyBid this now can be calculated easily using the “Star” functions. If you are not familiar with this check out this video on the HCSS Academy LINK

So what does this look like in an estimate? See my example for a project manager below where I also solve the issue of not having manhours exported to accounting and/or HeavyJob for the PM and/or Super to charge against. This is a manual calculation where you will have to take the total calculated cost divided by an hourly rate and really it only has to be done for the budget estimate as there is no cost.

Take a look on how your estimating team is costing PM’s and Supers. The method shown above might be an improvement. My specialty is improving accuracy and efficiency in HeavyBid so contact me if you need assistance in bringing your HeavyBid setup to the next level.