Construction Estimating Bidding Training Part 1 of 4 360p 2

I'll give you guys some cool examples. I don't have as much experience as some of you guys in this room, but I've been on some kind of cool projects. If you guys recognize this, this is Intro Cleveland. This is on the West 25th Project. This is the tallest, at the time it was the tallest mass timber building in the country. It still remains the biggest from a square foot standpoint, 512,000 square feet, and the structure is all timber, engineered wood. That's one of my research specialties. I'm writing a book about it right now. My research track is in mass timber, which, oh my god, guys, I'm going to give you some examples of how unique projects, you know, no matter how much experience we all get, you guys are going to run into something new that you learn about every single project, right? I've had commercial experience before I worked on this project. I've never done mass timber, right? Those costs were completely foreign to me, so what I want to talk a lot about today is how do you go and evaluate something that's what you're not used to? I'll give you another cool example on this project. What they did is, right up here on this top level, this is a where you can rent it out for weddings. It's a big rental space. It's beautiful, by the way, ghastly expensive to get it, but right underneath that are residential units. So when I'm drunk at two in the morning doing OHIO at a wedding, right, and jumping up and down, what is this nurse that's got to work it here at six in the morning? What do they do? Well, we put a four-inch slab on springs. Literally, I walked in the room like, what? Every, I can't remember the dimensions, it was every couple feet, there'd be a little cover in the concrete, you'd pull it off, and it's a spring like you would see underneath a vehicle, and they could be adjusted, and it's noise dampening, it doesn't vibrate, and you could adjust a four-inch concrete slab. So what I'm getting at is, guys, like you're going to see these unique systems, and again, this is from the project management standpoint, I've never seen that before. I've put in a million square feet of drywall, which is a common thing throughout this, but you're going to see these systems. Now you need to have a process in place for you guys to evaluate that and then hedge your risk. Hey, I have this unique thing that's out here, first you need to identify that, right, and then you need to have a plan to be like, okay, now how am I going to that risk for this crazy-ass spring system that we're going to be putting in? So it's oftentimes identifying those outliers on these projects that we talk about that throw us off. I can give you square foot costs all day of drywall installation, flooring, MEP, okay, that's pretty commonplace stuff, but now throw mass timber, throw a spring on the fourth floor. A little bit about me, I've been associate professor at Kent State for nine years now. I started my career with Turner Construction right out of college, so that would have been in 2010. I worked out of the Cleveland office for Turner Construction, all mostly commercial construction. My first project, Beachwood High School, we'll go through a couple of these. During that time working with Turner, I got my master's degree from Colorado State, but the cool thing, yeah, I'll talk about my education and that's all good and well. I built buildings, even during the summers now. Again, a PhD doesn't work toilet paper in the field. It's experience, right, it really is. So I stay active. I run projects over the summer. Last summer I built a nine million dollar hotel we'll talk about. So I'm constantly in the field, not as much as you guys, but I'm constantly in the field trying to learn and see what's going on out there. I've been a project engineer, assistant project manager, project manager, been an estimator. I'm going on 11 years about in the field. I've put about a billion dollars worth of work in place. Again, commercial standpoint, you know, a big, from the project management, big commercial standpoint is where my experience is. So I got my undergrad at Kent, my master's from Colorado State, and then I finished my PhD in construction management about 2021, right. And again, a lot of my research is in practical applications. It's not in theoretical, it is looking at mass timber structures, evaluating them in the real world standpoint. This is a project I just completed. We actually just had the grand opening the other day up in, we did one in Madison, this one's in Geneva. I don't know if you guys have heard of the Spire Institute in Geneva. This is the hotel we just completed right in front of there. So we'll talk about some past projects. We'll talk about the art of estimating. I call estimating, it's an art form. No one is going to be perfect. What I tell people, what I evaluate from an estimating standpoint is when we first start estimating or if we're estimating something that's kind of on the peripheral or we're not used to, our range is like this big, right, for how accurate those costs are actually going to be. But as you guys gain experience, as you get familiar with estimating, as you take classes like this, our goal hopefully is then to hone in as close as we possibly can to the actual accurate costs of that work in place. This is where I really learned a lot about estimating and costs. A lot of my projects, when I left Turner Construction in 2013, I went and worked for a company called DCK and I did a ton of work overseas. So I spent four or five years bouncing around islands in the Caribbean, did a project in Baku, Azerbaijan, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, down here in St. Martin, down a little bit south in Dominica, and we'll look at a couple of these projects. So 23 million dollars, I was assistant superintendent. The unique thing about this project was our contract type. Okay, we had 400, we had liquidated damages tied to this project. Okay, and those liquidated damages were to the tune of $400,000 if we don't turn the project over on the agreed upon date, and $10,000 a day after that. Unique contract, very unique contract. Okay, and what we did from an estimating standpoint is we hedged our risk. When you enter into a contract like that, what did we do with our profit margins and some of our costs? We had to increase it. You have to balance and hedge your risk with something like that, right? And you have to be willing to go into that with a little bit higher number and be willing to, you know, to offset those risks associated with it. You know, the craziest part of this project wasn't so much the constructability cost. It was day one, I'm pulling up, copper wire is getting stolen right off our job coming off. Things were getting stolen like crazy, so what do we have to do? Increase site fencing, buy cameras, hire a full-time security guard. That cost us $43,000 over two years. Something that wasn't in the contract, wasn't in the special conditions, but it was this peripheral thing that theft was a big deal on the island. So what do we do on our next project? Carry forward that security cost. These are the things that you kind of learn that you've got to constantly evaluate and think about that have to be instilled there. Another one is the concrete batch plant. There's one. If you want your concrete, you're at the mercy of that concrete batch plant. Could be at three in the morning, could be at 1 30 in the morning, whenever you're going to get it, at whatever cost you're going to get it, right? And those were those unique proof, not saying everything's going to be that unique, but those are those project outliers that you've got to try to think through beforehand. You guys have to understand your projects. You have to know what jurisdiction you're in. You have to know where your employees are parking. You have to know how you're going to get your material to the rooftop. These are these little things that actually have a big impact on your cost that require you to have kind of a boots in the dirt approach to evaluating the project holistically. These little things have tripped me up more than the exterior stucco cost, right? So I always recommend, I never now put an estimate together, guys, unless I put my eyes on the project. And that can happen in a number of ways, which we'll talk about that. Matterport could be digitally. It could be a Zoom call. It could be some, you guys have to really absorb as much as you can about your projects before you're ready to start putting an accurate bid down because those little things are what have the big cost. I'm from Jefferson, Ohio, up in middle of nowhere, Ashtabula County. This is a 53,000 square foot project I did, $3.75 million. Nothing really crazy. Nothing really crazy happened here. It's a warehouse with a basic office addition. From an estimating standpoint, we had very minimal change orders because the building was relatively straightforward and easy. It's a kit building, big open space, nice and comfortable. Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, this one was unique. So the Hilton Hotel in Cabo San Lucas got hit dead on with an F4 hurricane in 2014. What's unique about this from a cost standpoint, estimating standpoint, we had two really owners in the room. I'm sitting there with Hilton, the actual owner of the hotel from Israel, and then the Chicago-based Nationwide Adjusters. All right, so every time we had to put a bid together, every time we had to adjust costs, it had to go through a weird filtration system of those three different folks. Fine, that's cool. You guys have to be willing to adjust your estimates on the fly, be willing to present them in different ways to get them approved. Beachwood High School, like I've said before, nightmare of a project from a renovation standpoint, okay. Oftentimes, in my opinion, I think a lot of people agree, renovations and additions tend to bring more challenges from a cost standpoint. There's more unknowns. There are things on drawings that aren't shown, or if they are shown, it's very vague and they then pass the responsibility on to the contractor. Like, it's up to you. Contractor investigate, contractor walk, contractor, contractor. There are these notes in the drawings that require you to do things. So again, asbestos all throughout the building. We were doing work here and there, just kind of a really a nightmare type project. We ended up having change orders out the wazoo because our client, and we could have probably done a better job at convincing them, they weren't willing to spend the upfront cost to do the additional testing. They don't want to spend the money to test, right? But ultimately, every time we put a screw in a wall, every time we opened up a ceiling, we had to then usually, as Mark knows, test. And it just bogged down construction. We had a ton of change orders. Day one, we had a $50,000 change order. I can't show some pictures of this because it's a MARSOC project, which is the Marine Special Forces. This is Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. What's crazy about this job, what our biggest challenge was, was getting folks on the military base. We could not get people through the background check process to perform some of those scopes of work. They were so stringent in their special conditions. If you would have gotten a bar fight when you were 18 years old and had a misdemeanor, you ain't getting on the military base. Your record had to be completely clean. And what we ended up having to do was to bring in a painting company from Florida, pay for their housing, for them to drive up there for folks with clean records, had to go through this accentuating circumstances just to get people on the facility to put paint on our walls. And that's on us. It was on our costs because right in the special conditions is outlined all the background check requirements that we need to get people on the base. Cost us $50,000. This is the USVI. What's really cool about this project, we completely renovated this hotel in 2015. Up, down all new rooms, all new roof, finishes everything except for the a year later gets destroyed by a hurricane. Who gets the contract to go back down and build it? We literally rebuilt the same project back to back. So while it was the same project, we had to approach our estimate a completely different way because our client was different. And the way and money that we had to show, we had to be more transparent because now there's federal money in there involved, right? So what I'm getting at is in the projects that I've picked out to show you, every single time my estimate has changed. The way that I've presented my estimate has changed. The people evaluating my estimate has changed. I've had to show different things. I've had to adjust different things depending on those types of projects. This is the Hampton Inn. It's pretty easy, pretty straightforward. Our biggest challenge was non-union labor, a mix of union and non-union labor. And that's a big challenge in our industry right now. I'm sure you guys are all aware of getting labor. So that's one thing I think we all should be, should be a question mark. And as a general risk now, you know, we're going to talk about general and project risks. Every time you have a general risk of like meeting your schedule, like we all know that. But I think a general risk now on our projects needs to be manpower. When you're sitting down and bidding that job, you and we're going to go through staffing a little bit later. You've got to think how we're going to staff this project, man. And if it is going to be that transient person that we're maybe have to compete with with per diem, that's got to be reflected in your costs. So you guys, I think more than ever have to have an understanding of how you're actually going to perform the work and who's going to perform it. This is my second project, Cleveland Medical Mart. You guys are probably well aware of that project. 13 acres, call it a bathtub. Very unique from an estimating standpoint. It's funny, the OSHA buildings right over here where the Federal Celebrities Building, OSHA could see right down in it. All eyes on this project, a ton of marketing, a ton of information behind it. We ran into a lot of different things on this project. There was especially this lakeside, eroding the lakeside. There's all kinds of these costs. You know, from Turner Construction standpoint, we had 30 professionals on that project. Our estimate on an Excel spreadsheet could go around this whole room. I mean, it was just a nightmare from a cost standpoint of capturing and evaluating all those things. So here are the main pillars that we should judge every decision. And I use this in the field and it really, really helps me. How does that decision affect safety? All right, we're talking about cost here, but we'll talk, we'll go through each one of these. The five main pillars is safety, cost, quality, schedule. Sustainability is there. It's more on the peripheral. It's not in the practical world and realm of things. It's not really talked about as much unless you're on a lead project or a third party certified project that requires you to follow some sort of sustainability paperwork or process. But here are really the main four. So you need to think yourself when you're making a decision, you're putting a cost in, how does this affect those other pillars? How does my move affect the other chess pieces on the board? It's not always smart to make a cost decision in lieu of safety. I've done it and I've only gotten screwed over in the end. All right, it's not smart to make a decision just solely based on quality and not thinking about these other pillars. So constantly evaluate your decisions in your estimate. How does it affect these other worldly realms? Because ultimately they all play off of each other. If you've got a quality issue, it's going to hurt your pocketbook. If you have a schedule issue, it's going to hurt your pocketbook. It's going to affect it at some level. We might not know the impact. You can't always judge that, but you've got to really be sensitive to this. Oftentimes too, we're all working off of one of pillars that are more important to us. Subcontractors have pillars that are more important and weighty to them. This is usually last on a lot of people's minds. But I have made decisions that have ignored that chess piece and it's come to bite me in the ass later. So again, when you're sitting there and you're putting your estimates together and you're thinking about the things I'm talking about and we've discussed here, I would just really urge you to say, how does this affect my project holistically? I've been on 36 month, 48 month projects guys. I can't make a decision today for today. I've got to think about down the road. I've got to think about client relationships. I have to think about these other pillars, right? So we've got to just really, really think about those things. The art of estimating is goal. Your goal is to get costs as accurate as possible. The peripheral, the cost, the profit margins, the soft costs that come up, that is a separate discussion. One that needs to be had, one we will have, but it's separate. Your goal should be how much to a T is this installation of drywall going to be? The manpower, the material, the time, whatever it needs to install this, that's really our goal from our estimating standpoint. The other stuff is great and it comes, but these are those really three areas that we want to focus on. Materials, labor, and equipment. Those are the costs of construction is what we call it. Once we've identified the cost of construction, now my soft costs and my other decisions that I make are, should all be based off of this. If this number is a hundred thousand dollars, right, my risk profile, my builder's risk, insurance, my architectural fees, my profit margin, all those things that are on the peripheral all have to come off of this. As that increases, maybe the other things decrease or increase relative to that. But if I can come down from an estimating standpoint as the closest and most accurate to this number as I possibly can, that's the, that's the tough part. As long as we have that number, those secondary things that we're all going to talk about, general conditions numbers and percentage based type things, it's coming off of that. And so really that comes down to the understanding of the scope of work. Plain and simple, it is us understanding the documents is what is going to lead to the accuracy of the cost of construction that we generate. Because if you guys want to be really, really good in evaluating scopes of work, you should know the creation, how they are created, what is the thought process of the architects and the owner's team putting those together. Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, I do a cleaning contract with a local company and I write the scope of work, wipe down all surfaces, right, vacuum, sweep. And in scopes of work, when you're generating them, you can be, you can be over detailed and you can be under detailed, right? But I was trying to be as comprehensive as possible. I want you to wipe down the surfaces, vacuum, clean the door top, you know, try to hit everything, right? So we signed the contract for the, for the scope, for the cleaning. I come in the room, it's beautiful, smells great. Floor's all clean, everything's wiped down. I'm like, this is really nice. Then I look up and in all the light trays, they're all filled with dust and dirt. And I said, Ralph, hey man, you see those light trays up there? You didn't hit those. What'd he say to me? It's not in my scope of work. I've got to get ladders and scaffolding and bring those down there. And it ended up being a $16,000 change order for the whole job that I ended up paying. And I know for a fact that dude had been in the industry for 30 years. I know that the light tray issue had come, he just knew, right? I just knew that he knew. And that's fine. It is what it is, whatever. You know, it happens. I learn, you learn as you go. But I think there are subcontractors and, and I think everybody kind of approaches it like, hey, they might be missing something in here. Or I know there's something missing in the scope of work. And it's always taught me guys, one sentence equated $16,000. And that's what's so difficult in our industry is one line item is $50,000. One line item is $3,200. One line item is $19,000. I mean, words on a page equate dollars to our industry. Here's the tough part. You're going to be bidding on multiple projects. You might not be able to put your eyes on that project. It's very easy to pencil whip stuff and say, yeah, that looks good. That looks good. That looks good. That looks good. But I'm telling you the extra effort you guys put in as an estimator and a person evaluating projects could pay off potentially in mitigating those types of things. Now, the problem is I can never guarantee you that you did mitigate it or you will mitigate it, or you will catch something that's in the documents, but you got to do your darndest. And you've really got to understand that, hey, this scope of work is trying to define project goals. Get a good understanding of that. Know who the client is and what they're trying to achieve. You know, there's a lot of times guys, I, before, just like what Mark says, before I even open up documents or drawings, I read the scope of work and I Google all about the client. Because a lot of times an understanding of the client will drive the goals of the project. I know that there's certain areas in this building, this is where I lecture a lot, scene lecture hall, that are going to have higher levels of quality or finished expectations than other areas. I know that the client's, it's a higher education facility, is going to focus on certain areas on this project versus others. I should spend more time in this estimate versus others, right? I should adjust my focus as an estimator to important contractors, okay? So for example, this is a cast-in-place concrete building. Post-tension slabs, cast-in-place concrete. Here's another thing that I think will make you a really good estimator when you're also choosing subcontractors to perform these work, this work. Choose the subcontractors wisely who are on the critical path for your project. And when we talk about critical path for a project like this, our concrete contractor is a pretty damn important contractor on this job. I ain't gonna skimp. I'm not gonna just pencil whip the concrete estimate and evaluation. You guys, if you're gonna pencil whip something, pencil whip the carpet guy. Pencil whip the cleaning guy. I'm serious. If you're gonna choose your time wisely, choose it to the important aspects of that project. I ain't gonna screw around and hire Billy Bob's Roofing to do the roof here. I'm gonna evaluate that estimate. I'm gonna spend more pre-construction and evaluation time in the line items that are, or the contractor that's really gonna hit the road on my project, right? You know, you just have to be able, you better believe this curtain wall contractor, which by the way, this curtain wall came from Germany. Nightmare, right? That curtain wall contractor installing, that's a pretty damn important part of your building. So I'm evaluating that bid. I'm scrutinizing those numbers. I'm crunching those numbers a lot more important, right? Now Bob, the cool thing about like his subcontractor, for example, like electrical is important on every damn project. So are the PMs that you submit bids to or evaluate to hopefully should really be spending a lot of time and care with that contractor. You have to. Establishing project deliverables, right? Creating a project timeline, summarizing project cost. Those really first five are impactful in your scope of work evaluations and how much money and effort and time you have to put into it and how you present it, right? So having a good understanding of these overall things is going to help you derive your schedules. Oh, by the way, state signatories, I always require now manpower loaded schedules from subcontractors, right? I want to see and have the signatory person for that company put their John Hancock on the contract of how much manpower and how much schedule and how much estimate that they're going to have. It might not hold up anything. It might not help you down the road, but it's always nice to just say, hey, I've got the person who's the mover and shaker at this company has their name attached to an estimate, a schedule, and how they're going to perform that work, right? And that might be smart for some of you guys from a subcontracting standpoint to provide to the client to help you better understand how you guys are going to achieve the work. So again, project objectives, we've got to understand what is the issue and what are we trying to achieve on the project? What is the client trying to achieve? This is going to drive your estimate. If it's a, like at the Kent State CAD guys, I have exposed concrete floors and I know that they want certain areas to be bougie because this is going to be the hallmark project on Kent State. It's a big deal. So that I better spend a lot of time in these common areas when I'm evaluating drawings. I better spend a lot of time understanding these drawings. In the big lecture hall, the first thing I'm thinking about when, oh, this is an important room. So before I even look at the drawings, I know the objectives of the space. And in this Kent State CAD, we have barreled ceilings, level five finish. I always tell our students, look up that you're sitting under a $250,000 ceiling, right? Whereas you're just doing an estimate. Oh, drywall ceiling, drywalls. No, if I know, holy ----, this isn't that big area. I know it's going to be important or floating and clouds and all this crazy ----. Asterix, I'm going to focus on that area, right? No one cares what the damn utility closet looks like. I can pencil whip that area a little bit. I can skim through that a little bit. But because I know it's a higher education facility and it's the stalwart and everybody wants to come and look at it, I know in that main area, there's going to be an additional cost because of the expectation of those finishes. When's the project starting? When does it need to be finished? And in conjunction with when do certain things need to be finished within the project? To give you an example, the new Kent State Business Building, it's supposed to be turned over in fall 2024. Us annoying ass professors demand that our offices are ready a month before the building opens because they want to move all their cool diplomas on the wall and stuff like that. So in that contract, it's, hey, you're turning the building over on February, you're handing me the keys in 2024, but you're going to have the offices finished in the summer. So now you'll have projects where it's like, I've got certain things that are due at certain times, affects my estimate, affects the way that I align types of things. And that all comes from just understanding the project goals and objectives. What needs to get done in order to go from where you are now to a finished project? That's kind of a common one. Deliverables. This is super important. Deliverables, I've seen very, very unique ones. Mock-ups. I'll give you guys a great one. In intro Cleveland, the curtain wall system, we had to produce a mock-up and also test the mock-up. So I don't know if you guys have ever known how to test a curtain wall system. In the actual specifications, we had to fly down to Florida. Well, I guess we could have drove, but we had to go to Florida. You put your assembly in at a testing facility that's down in Florida. You put your completed assembly in front of an airboat motor, and you launch water at your assembly at 130 miles an hour. That was in the specifications that we had to do that cost like $30,000 to do. You guys should have a good understanding of your contract payment terms, because there's different ways that you can play and negotiate those types of things. When I was with DCK, we were so cash-strapped. Remember, this is from a big commercial standpoint, so the numbers are just a lot higher. We'd put in $5 million worth of work in that month. That's a lot of money, right? Again, big commercial type stuff, right? I mean, what's the interest on $5 million over a 30-day period? It's actually real money. We would literally just not pay people to just not pay them for that 30 days, because I'd rather have the money in the bank. We can make money off the interest. We were that cash-strapped, and what it does, the old terminology ---- rolls downhill, right? Unfortunately, the lower contractors usually pay the price for that, and you want to continue to work with us. If it was up to me, if it was me, and I was coming from a subcontracting standpoint, I would have it right in the fine print, right at the bottom, like your damn credit card statements. They put that ---- in there, the little line items, right, where it's like, yeah, you owe this interest. Put it in there. I bet you a majority of the time, they're not even going to say anything about it. They might not even notice it. They might not even care about it. They're just going to say, all right, whatever. Will they even read it? I don't know, but at least it might give you a leg to stand on if it comes down to that point. Hey, it's in my contract that you owe me the interest associated with this. Will you actually go pursue it? Is it actually worth fighting for? I don't know, but if you have it in there, it's covering you. I'd put it in. 10% interest accrued daily for every day after we're not getting paid, whatever the hell it may be. Something to think about, but those payment terms, what I'm getting at is, you know, or if you offer a reduction in your percentage, a reduction, not really, but it's an illusion that people, maybe that's worth it. That affects the way you estimate, and that is going to affect your number. So I think, guys, especially in this hyper-competitive, oh God, I'll give you guys a great example. Turner Construction. You know they're smart, man. When I first started there, they said, why are we paying a third party to provide builder's risk insurance for us? You know that Turner Construction used to go get Nationwide or Liberty Mutual or whatever to cover issues and accidents, builder's risk policies on jobs, right? Client requires it. And they said, why are we paying them 2%, 1.5%? When we're training our employees on safety, and we're coming in on these projects really, really safe because we invest so much in this training, why don't we offer the insurance? So you know what a group of people did who are multi-millionaires now at this point? They broke off and created TSIB, Turner Surety Insurance Brokerage. They started self-insuring jobs. One of my first jobs was a CSIP self-insurance job. That is a spinoff of Turner looking at the spreadsheet and saying, where can we carve out a 1%? Where can I pick up half a percent on a job? It's cheap. Oh, you want to go to the next level? Have you guys heard of ladders last? Most people laughed at Turner Construction. They laughed in their face. You know on Turner Construction jobs now, you have to pull a permit to use a ladder. Dude, you have to physically... I know, everybody's like, what the hell are you... When you close your eyes and you think about construction, like what does construction look like? A ladder is a pretty... like a ladder, a hammer, a truck, like it goes hand-in-hand with construction. Well, let's peel back the onion and understand why they're doing that, okay? That's how smart they are because they're looking for the percentages. Their biggest accidents on their job sites that they're self-insuring, by the way, are from falls. It now requires the contractors to go by scaffolding and use scissor lifts. So what happens to the bids? They're going to be more expensive. It's going to cost more money. Who pays for that? The client. How do they sell it to the client? You're going to be safer, Wendy. Here's the data on the project. You're going to pay a little bit more, but we're going to save Jimmy John's arm when he falls down and breaks it. We're going to be more safe on our job site. So the contractors are more... or the clients are saying, okay, we'll do that. Oh, we're more productive because we're working off platforms and all this stuff. But what they're really doing... yes, they care about people's safety, of course, but what they're really doing is saving on the back end because they have less accidents and injuries that the client is paying for and they're self-insuring. So why should you guys, from an estimating standpoint, not look at similar things? I'm not saying you go create your own insurance company tomorrow. That might not make the most sense, but if you can carve out 0.25% here, if you can make a little bit here, inflate a little bit over here, it's a fine line to doing it, but it's worth it of looking for ways that you can add value because they are. Ladders last. The damn helmets now with the chin straps on them. I can't... everybody laughs. Guys, and most people on the field, they'll laugh at all that stuff. These guys are idiots. They got to wear this ----. There's deeper reasonings behind it. There's way it's all monetarily driven of how... because ultimately, guys, you guys are great experienced people and you all are going to be estimating pretty much that scope of work. Your competitors at Precision are just as seasoned as you, right? And they're probably sitting down and estimating in a very similar standpoint. You guys are pretty much looking at those costs very, very minutely. So the difference in you guys being a successful estimator or making more money in your jobs has to be operating in that peripheral world of the little things. Expected outcomes. Looking for an increase in sales. Are we looking for an increase in traffic? What is our expected outcome from an estimating and constructability standpoint from this job? Maybe this job, kind of like what we were talking about before, you won't lower your number to get out there, but maybe getting on a job like this will increase your traffic, will increase your name. It might have cost impacts further down the road. Remember, you're playing chess, not checkers, right? Now, it's hard to think about and it's very hard to quantify, but it's something that you need to think about holistically. Hey, I'm going to be with this organization, this company for a while. What's the long-term impacts of the outcome on this job? How important to me is the relationship with this client? It's a fine line, but you've got to make that investment. It's just like safety, what Turner Construction talks about. If you don't invest in safety, it's going to get you. But if you do, you can't over invest as well. If you invest too much, and it's very hard to quantify. I ran safety on a job for Turner Construction when I first started coming up, and it's like, it sucked because I don't know how many people I actually saved. Or like me yelling at Ralph to get his glasses on, and the next thing you know, a shard hits it, and I just saved your eye. You'll never know that. You'll never really know that impact. It's a very hard thing to quantify, but we do know if you don't invest in it, that your EMR number, which we can talk about, and it will eventually erode. So it's a very fine gauge of thinking about how much do I give to invest in the future with working with folks? Or how much is this going to pay me out front? It's very, very hard to quantify. From a project management standpoint, from the PM, construction manager, I hated change orders. We build in, we get a 10% markup on them, but it usually never even made financial sense for us because of managing it. Tracking the process took so much time and energy away from me that oftentimes it's not really even worth it for us. And the subcontractors, yeah, it's worth it for them at that standpoint, but it's a fine balance of how much you rely on those versus how much you build in or you should. It's just kind of a fine line. And guys, I always tell people it's so hard to teach construction management because there is no definitives. The only thing that is constant is change in construction management. I love to teach history. I always tell kids all the time. June 6, 1944, we landed on the beaches in D-Day. It's a fact. We can just say that, and we all know it, and it's like, okay, it's a fact. We can't say that about construction. It's moving targets. There's constant change. Every single one has different impacts and contract types and all these unique things that we have to think about and play for. What our role is in this whole thing is, obviously, if the bids are too high, you're not going to get the job, but I will tell you this. Anytime you get ---- for not getting a job or missing out on a job, you always need to think about this. Some of the best jobs I ever did as an estimator are walking away or ones that I didn't get. Don't ever think just because you didn't get it that it wasn't the right, like, oh man, I'm really down on myself. I'm telling you right now, think about that and keep that in the back of your head. Some of the best jobs I ever did were ones I did not get or decided to say, I'm good. I'm moving on to the next one, right? Now, there'll be some you really, really want, and you're like, damn, they're really, really good, but sometimes the best business decision for your organization and your role is to not get it, right, is to walk away from that, is to not be a part of that team that would ultimately really make your life hell and erode it. And the other thing you also have to consider, too, if you're working from a pure estimating standpoint, you are serving or disserving the people who have to run the project. Just like what Mark was saying, like, us putting the estimate together is a different story than the person who then has to go run it. Wendy, right, like you said, you get these estimates that become your budget, and it's like, if I'm skimping or if I'm cutting things, it's only making your life terrible. I might get the job and everyone's happy, good job, Ralph, man, you got the job, great job, we got this thing, but then in a month, I'm screwing my PM over, and their life is hell running this thing, and now you start getting feedback, Anthony, your estimate sucks, you missed this, this is, I'm dying here, I need more project management, you put overhead in too low, and I can't keep up with work, or we need to bring in, that's not good either, right? So the best thing you can do is accurately estimate those costs and make sure you have the right materials, that you're not thinking about delays or you're trying to project those as much as you can, and you're making sure that your bid isn't too low to miss out on that money, so think holistically about these jobs, don't think about how many did I get versus how many I didn't get.