While meeting with a new client recently, our discussion revealed a power struggle he was experiencing with his estimator. We talked through the issues and reached the conclusion that he needed to find an estimator that fit the role better and to immediately pull two outstanding bids before they killed the company.

While reflecting on the conversation a couple of days later, I realized that several estimators had placed previous clients in harms' way with their aggressive pricing and lack of knowledge of field crew productivity.

A common problem I've run into with contractors is their poor understanding of the role their estimators should be performing. In most cases, it should not be the estimator's role to make pricing decisions.

A full time estimator should be held accountable for meeting two goals: predicting the cost of construction and predicting the man-hours needed to complete the project on time. Failure to make accurate predictions of construction cost and project man-hours should be considered poor job performance.

Remember, I am writing this advice for self-performing contractors. Estimators of general contractors who do not deploy field crews do not worry about labor productivity.