Three estimators priced the same job. The spread was 22%.

Estimating error doesn't cancel out across a portfolio of jobs: it selects, and the selection runs against you.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for Three estimators priced the same job. The spread was 22%.

A useful and slightly unnerving exercise: take a job that has already been delivered, strip the pricing off the file, and hand the scope to three people who estimate for a living in your business. Ask them to price it independently. In most businesses that quote bespoke or semi-bespoke work, the answers come back further apart than anyone expected, not by a rounding error, but by a spread wide enough that the highest number would have lost the job and the lowest would have won it at a loss. The…

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