Nail Your Numbers: A Path to Skilled Construction Estimating and Bidding (Paperback) by David Gerstel

Nail Your Numbers is the new book from David Gerstel, a veteran builder and author of Running a Successful Construction Company, the best seller which has long been regarded as a "bible" of the construction industry.

Nail Your Numbers is a complete guide to estimating accurately and bidding wisely. It includes guidance on:

• Selecting the right jobs to bid
• Accurately figuring labor costs
• Obtaining reliable sub and supplier quotes
• Astutely marking up for overhead and profit
• The creation of a powerful Excel estimating spreadsheet
• Protecting a bid during construction with a thorough and fair contract

Nail Your Numbers shows readers how to build a file of their own labor productivity records -- an essential but widely neglected tool for the production of reliable estimates. And it offers them eighteen samples of the author's own records as well as many other forms and checklists.

Along with information vital to the craft of estimating and bidding, readers are shown a path they can travel out of the competitive bid rat race and the cranking out of endless free bids to working on a Cost Planning (aka Negotiated Bid) basis. Thereby, they can get paid for their estimates. And they can greatly increase the percentage of the projects they actually build after having invested time and money in bidding them.

Like Running a Successful Construction Company, Nail Your Numbers is printed in full color and is heavily illustrated with charts, job site photographs, and architectural drawings. Key ideas are illustrated with striking and often humourous stories. Written in Gerstel's friendly and relaxed style, Nail Your Numbers provides pleasurable reading along with invaluable education. For half the price of a good tablesaw blade, Nail Your Numbers offers 388 pages of sound guidance to the work of estimating and bidding, the heart of any construction business.