These guides are written for the owner, estimator or operations manager of a mechanical contracting firm who wants to work something out properly, not just read about it. Each one walks through a calculation or a decision tool step by step, with an illustrated example and a list of the mistakes we see most often. You can use all three without ever contacting us.
All three connect to each other. The labour rate decides what you charge, the WIP schedule shows whether the jobs you priced are earning what you expected, and the bid scorecard decides which jobs get priced at all.
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A bid/no-bid scorecard for mechanical contractors
Every bid costs estimating hours, and winning the wrong job costs far more. A short weighted scorecard, filled in before anyone opens the drawings in detail, keeps your estimators on the work you can win and deliver at a margin.
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How to calculate a burdened labour rate and a selling rate that actually pays
Your real cost per billable hour is wages plus burden, divided by billable efficiency, plus overhead per billable hour. Your selling rate is that cost divided by one minus your target net margin. Here is how to work out each piece.
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Reading a work-in-progress schedule: what overbillings, underbillings and fade tell you
A WIP schedule compares what each open job has earned with what you have billed, and shows whether its projected margin is holding. Read monthly, it is the earliest warning a contractor owner gets that a job, or the whole year, is going wrong.
How to calculate a burdened labour rate
Read the burdened labour rate guide.
This is the place to start if you have never rebuilt your hourly rate from scratch, or if you suspect your busy months are less profitable than they should be. It takes you from a technician's base wage to a full selling rate in six steps: burden, billable efficiency, overhead per billable hour, fully loaded cost, profit margin and material margin.
What you will learn:
- why dividing by billable hours instead of paid hours can add $20 or more to your real cost per hour
- the difference between dividing and multiplying when you add a profit margin, and what it costs over a year
- why markups and margins must never be confused, with a conversion table
Bring last year's payroll summary and income statement. The calculation takes about an hour. It underpins our pricing and estimating service.
How to read a WIP schedule
If you do project work of any size, the work-in-progress schedule is the earliest warning you get that a job, or the year, is going wrong. This guide explains each column in plain language and works through three example jobs: one overbilled, one underbilled and one fading.
What you will learn:
- what overbillings and underbillings tell you about your real cash position
- how to spot fade, and the difference between steady fade and a late drop
- six questions to ask at every monthly review with your project managers
You do not need to prepare a WIP schedule to use this guide; your accountant or controller usually does that. You need to be able to read one and ask the right questions. It connects to our job costing service.
A bid/no-bid scorecard
Read the bid/no-bid scorecard guide.
This guide gives you a weighted ten-factor scorecard for tenders and larger quotes, with a fully scored example and the knock-out questions to ask before anyone opens the drawings. It also shows how to calculate what your bidding really costs per job won.
What you will learn:
- how estimating hours on lost bids land on the jobs you win
- which factors to weight most heavily, and how to adjust them from your own results
- why bidding to keep crews busy can block better work in the next season
It is most useful for commercial and multi-unit residential contractors, with a shorter version for residential replacement quotes. It links to our capacity and hiring and service-mix work.
How to use these guides with your team
Pick one guide and work through it in a single meeting with the people who would act on it: your estimator for the labour rate, your project managers for the WIP schedule, your estimator and operations lead for the scorecard. Use real numbers from last year. Write down the three things that surprised you.
If the result raises questions you cannot answer internally, that is a good moment for a conversation. The first 30 minutes are free, online by video call or in person; details are on the contact page, and rates for anything beyond that are on pricing.
What these guides do not cover
They do not give accounting, tax, legal or code-compliance advice. Your accountant prepares your statements and your WIP schedule; your lawyer reviews contracts; your provincial regulators set licensing and safety rules, which we list on each region page. The guides are about the business decisions that sit on top of those.
Frequently asked questions
Are the numbers in the guides industry averages?
No. Every figure is an illustration, chosen to make the arithmetic easy to follow. The point is to replace them with your own numbers, which are the only ones that matter for your pricing.
Can I share these guides with my estimators and project managers?
Yes, please do. They are written so a project manager or office manager can follow them without a finance background.
Will you add more guides?
We add guides when owners keep asking the same question. Tell us by call, text or email which mechanical-business question you keep running into, and it may become the next guide.