I post-construction carpet cleaned a building the other day, but instead of the usual encap, I had to portable HWE extract it because of the dust. my question is, I think that I WAY underbid...and I need to know what I SHOULD of bid...heres the facts:

4,550 sqft
priced it at .13 / ft
took TWO guys five hrs to do it...
so...thats $118 / hr, but for TWO guys, not just one.

A Servpro friend of mine told me that I should aim for $100 / hr for the 1st guy, then $75 / hr for subsequent technicians.

If thats the case, I should of charged .19 per foot, but that seems like a lot to me for a post-construction extraction (no vacuuming, prespray, etc. - just splash & dash, BUT I had to do some manual spotting)

what should I have charged?

Thanks!

Joe

Joe- Yes you could have doen better or worse. Some would have bid it at .08-.10 SF. So you'll make it up with them next time, No Worry's. I'm pretty sure your overhead is less than Serve Pro so % percentage wise you may have made more profit in the long run than your friend would have.

You just answered your own question, part of the problem could have been you were running a portable thus having to stop and start to fill and dump.


I still may have tried encap with micro fiber bonnets for the dust residue, or vac then encap. Not seeing the job it is hard to say what you should charge not to mention what is the going rater for your geographic area.

Sometimes you just will not make your target rate, other times you make way over that rate. It all balances out

I don't think you goofed, not bad money for our part of the world. I never go by what other people say, you should know your own costs of doing business and base your selling price on that.

For my area, it sounds to me like you did alright for portable work and a helper. I question that a helper who is vacuuming and running a bucket brigade needs to be charged out at 75.00 an hour. If you get it great, but I would rather have help at a lower rate than do it alone.

If you had used a truckmount, your per hour rate would have gone way up. It isn't hard to extract 1500 sq.ft. per hour on maintenance type cleaning.

i've only bid on one post-construction clean-up, and we didnt get it. so having never done a job like that, my question is:

why didnt you Encap it?

10 man hours to HWE 4500 sq.ft.???

you could have thoroughly pre-vac'ed all the drywall dust up and encaped it all in 5 or 6 hours w/ 1 man....no?

how are you doing? we havent talked in a while, give me a jingle sometime...to answer your question, I didnt feel it was appropriate to cimex it - or else I would have in a heartbeat!!!!

two reasons - I felt that hwe was the only real way to actually extract the dust that was present in the fibers, and looking at the waste water in both machines confirmed that I felt like I chose the right way...

and 2nd, the carpet was a loop pile, but not the real tight glue-down stuff in offices. It was a very loose loop, and had a fancy design thru out the carpet. I was afraid that maybe it might be too aggressive on this carpet, and also I dont know really if the owners would of cared for the swirled appearance the cimex would have given it.

Joe

One of the faithful with a conscience?

Good call!