What is an outsource mechanical estimating service and what do they do.

I want to, I want to take a few minutes here and I just want to discuss what for me, what that is and what that means. So an outsource estimating service is someone such as myself and I call myself, I call them MOES mechanical outsource estimating services. So we are people who are here and available for contractors to hire us.

Those contractors will typically hire us to bid commercial projects like schools or hospitals, box stores, chain stores, restaurants, whatever that commercial property is. And the reason why they hire us, there's a multitude of reasons. Let's start with the little guy.

So the small guy sometimes will hire us because they're residential people and that's what they pretty much know, but they want to get into the commercial world and so they hire us because based on our experience, they know they can trust that we know how to bid a commercial project for them because they don't bid the same as residential. And if you're an estimator, you know that. And if you are a experienced seasoned tradesman , you know that these are two different worlds.

Residential is a lot different. So they hire us to to bid these projects for them. And usually they're smaller projects. You know, it might be a, a , a small store, like maybe a small McDonald's or something like that. Those are why the little guys might hire us or the little guys might hire us because they have one guy, or this might even be the mid sized companies too . They have one guy, but he's too busy. They can't really find anybody else that they trust to hire in house right now.

So this is a temporary fix and they just want to hire us to help them get through that . That period where they need some help. And so that happens a lot. And so they may not be with you forever. Well, when I say they're not with you forever, they may not hire you every week, all year long, every year. But if you do your job right, they are going to be your customer for life.

They might work with you today, they might work with you next month, then you might go away for a few months and then they come back. I can't tell you how many clients I've had that need me and they come to me and when they don't need me, they go away. But when they need somebody again, I'm the guy they come to, they come back to me. So do this. Right. And you'll have them forever, even though you don't have them all the time.

And another guy that might use you is the big guys, the really big guys who are just way overwhelmed, there's more jobs that they want to bid. They don't have enough manpower . Um, so they, they outsource that . They hire guys like us to help them out. And sometimes it's just what we call a takeoff, which is where we just count all the material that's on the blueprint.

We count all the equipment and then we give that back to them and they take those counts and they put them into their spreadsheet and they add all the extra costs , you know, the permits, all the other added project management, taxes, whatever else. They'll add all those up node , they'll do it themselves and finish it up. But you just never know who's going to hire your why.

And so that's, that's what an outsource estimating services we are on standby 24 seven at their ready so that when they need us, they can contact us and we can help them prepare any project they want in a very quick manner. So that's what we specialize in. That's , that's what makes us valuable. If you've got clients that are calling you and they want this job in one to two days, I know some guys they say, well I can do that in about three days, but there's an expedition fee.

I got to expedite that through my , my system. So I've got to put other stuff aside and I got to pick yours up. And in order to do that, I got to make it worth my while . I got to charge a little extra. I've never done that. I've never, in fact, some guys even charge extra for addendums. Sometimes a lot of addendum's come out, make a lot of changes. Some people will charge extra money for that and I don't have a problem with that.

That's fine with me, but I don't, I charge you a nice, good, large, fair price up front so that whatever happens, I got you covered and it works for me. It doesn't work for everybody. Some people really don't want to pay the extra up front, so they just, they would rather get the cheap guy. I'm fine with that too. There's, there's plenty of work out there for all of us. So you've got to figure out which guy you want to be. So as a mechanical outsource estimator, are you the cheap guy?

You know who, who is just doing really good mid-level work really quickly. Who is charging for all the extras? Where are you? The expensive guy who charges a little extra up front no matter what, but never charges an extra fee on the backend. You know, you kind of have to decide that going into this, and for me that was the guy who charged more upfront , never charged anything extra on the back.

You listen to my podcast, you know I'm a mechanical outsource, estimated mechanical HVHC is my background. I've been in the HVAC world since 1996 it's the thing I know I do plumbing, I've done plumbing and sulfation . I've done all the mechanical installation for plumbing and HVHC. That's my world. That's , that's my wheel house . So I referenced mechanical outsource estimating all the time. In reality, outsource estimating can be done by anybody. I may can be a roofer or a concrete guy.

I'm the landscapers. Every project has 26 divisions of work. There's multiple divisions. And so there's work for all of us and we can all outsource the service. So if you are a roofer for instance, and you say, well, I'd like to get into this world, you can do it. There's, there's plenty of business out there for the roofers. There's tons of jobs that are outsourced every day. So whatever your Gianna is, whatever Nisha come from, that's what you're going to apply this to.

I just stay mechanical because that's where I come from. To me that is what an outsource estimator is. That's your responsibility is to be available to be able to help your clients on very little to short notice of any kind with any project of any size and our world. We might have to work long nights or weekends, but that's, that's the luxury of what we do. You know, we might work the nights and weekends and then we can , uh, kind decided to take some time off. That's what we do.

So for those of you who are still wondering what is an outsource estimator, it's somebody who's for hire, somebody who works for themselves, they've got their own office, home office, whatever it is, and they , they, their services to the contractors, to the guys out there. Some people have actually worked with, with engineers. I know estimators who specialize in working with engineers to help them figure up job costs. So you know, you could go that route too. But to me that's what it is.

And so if you're interested in this career, you know, I know everything about it, I can tell you whatever you need to know. Follow my podcast YouTube channel. If you need to get some education. I've got some free education out there and I've got some paid courses, six-figure tradesmen.com I've got a whole store full of all the courses that I offer. Some of those are free. So I encourage you to go check out the free ones, check them out, see what you can learn there.

Maybe I can teach you something new. If I don't teach you something new, maybe I can at least remind you of something that you already knew, but you might've kind of forgot . You know, because that's kind of my goal. My goal here is to , uh , to educate you and to motivate you and to make you a better version of yourself. So go out there and see if you can find something of any value that I might have to offer. So I've got a task for you.

Before we leave here, I want you to write down what makes you a professional estimating outsource service. What makes you a professional estimator? It's not a trick question and I know it seems really simple, but sit back and give this some serious thought because you've got competition. You're not the only one out there doing this. And so you need to answer this question.

If a client asks you what makes you the premier professional outsource estimating service for me, if you can't answer that question, you're going to lose a client. I want to be , I want you to be prepared for that because it could come up. Um, I've had people, I have had people ask me, what makes you qualified for me to hire you? Why would I hire you over the other guys? I've had people ask this. This is like a job interview these days. So I want you to, I was to sit down and write this down.

What makes you a professional outsource? Estimating service that way when somebody asks, you know your your locked and loaded ready to go. So I hope you learned something new. If you didn't learn anything new, I hope I at least reminded you of something that you already knew, but maybe you kind of forgot and now you can start to implement that again.

I want to see you, hopefully I see you on our next episode, episode seven for season one is going to be what is bid result tracking and why is it important? So I'm going to talk a little bit about what a , a, a bid result tracking process is. And I'm wondering, most of all, I'm going to tell you why that is so important. And as an outsource estimator, that's actually another service you could provide to your clients that can make you some more money. So hopefully you join us for episode seven.

My name is Jamie Henry, creator of estimating business in a box.