 Tom here from Lawrence systems, and I am in a unfinished building people always a hey Can you do more on-site when you're doing these wiring bids and wiring jobs? Yes Except most of time they're with occupied buildings. This building is well not yet occupied in under construction Now we've already been wanted, but I wanted to walk through a few things about our bid process How we do things and I give people a better more expanded idea I've talked about this before and there's people who say well You can't do things on a per drop price. It's even on a job like this Which is about 220 drops going in here in terms of 220 drops of Cableing that's going in cat 6 for those wondering but one of the important things is I'm gonna talk about how we bid it with the Riding rigging the prep work and everything and how we come up with that pricing and kind of walk you through the building in The process of what we're doing here before we get into that. Let's first If you'd like to learn more about me or my company head over to Lawrence systems calm If you'd like to hire sure project there's a hires button right at the top if you'd like to help keep this channel Sponsor-free and thank you to everyone who already has there is a join button here for YouTube and a patreon page Your support is greatly appreciated if you're looking for deals or discounts on products and services We offer on this channel check out the affiliate links down below there in the description of all of our videos Including a link to our shirt store We have a wide variety of shirts that we sell and new designs come out well randomly So check back frequently and finally our forums forums. Lawrence systems comm is where you can have a more in-depth discussion about this video And other tech topics you've seen on this channel now back to our content Okay, we'll start with kind of a walk through the building here And the first thing you're gonna notice is not only is the building not complete. Where is everybody? Well, it's about seven o'clock at night and we are still here one of the things we actually work out with the client Is hey, what kind of hours can we work on this? We actually like working when we're not tripping on all the other trade people here What I mean by that is they everyone has different tasks They have to do and putting a lot of people in the building together. Well, it can be a little bit challenging So we frequently work the different set of hours and see if we have access to the building at night It's a definite consideration when we're doing it is not always an option, but on this place It is which is great. We actually don't start until they leave So we're not you know in the way of the electricians and they're not in our way and vice versa So that makes a lot easier now when we first bid this job So there was some good and bad good pull strings Oh, that's uh, cannot get past fire stop below ceiling. That's not a good I know that's our notes. These are important notes and there's people here to take care of some of those aspects of it We'll come back and address that I didn't even know about that till now But we do look to see if there's pull strings inside of there. We're that's one of the considerations. We Look up at the ceiling above us and we try to say, all right. What is it going to take and this is a standard trust ceiling Uh, what is it going to take to attach to that? What kind of rigging do we need to get the j-hooks up and hold all of that? Where's the it room going to be? What's the average length of run? So those are all considerations when we went to near bid this now One of the things that was not here that's here now that does add a little bit of time But this was part of when we bid it versus when we want it And then we want it had to let them know Hey, this has to be addressed and what we mean by that is we had to address the fact that there's now Not ceiling tiles, but the ceiling structure. This wasn't even here When we first set our walkthrough there wasn't even lighting in here We got here really early on some of the bid process, but Nonetheless, no big deal. We adjusted and moved on. So that's now part of it where we have Okay, we added those hours now once you've come up with that then we break it down to our per drop price Now we came up with that per drop price plus we had the prep hours that go in there Now the reason for breaking it down this way and this has been like the debate of many comments Telling me that you can't do it this way But I will tell you I know a lot of successful people who do and I feel successful at doing a lot of these infrastructure and wiring jobs What we do is we come up with that per drop price because as the client Inadivitably it is almost never. I have ever done a job, especially when you're doing 220 drops job like this and a drop doesn't get added or removed. So When it's all done, we're going to count them punch them all down and just adjust by the drop price the client If they decide hey, can you put one more over here or one more over there? No problem. They have a sheet. They know our per drop price now granted if they were to put a drop At the furthest end of the building versus the middle of the building. Do we have a cost difference? Yes But that spends a lot of labor calculating all those little cost differences Later when people do it and most of them because you're only looking at small variances to the overall bit You don't think about it. You don't worry about it It's just a little bit more cable and you've already done all the pathing You've already put all the j-hooks up to carry the wire You're already have all of that other prep work Adding one or two more wires different now if they significantly change the job on you. Can you put? 100 more over here Then you may have to relook and add it because we only built paths that were Capable of carrying a certain amount of wire over a certain distance Now as far as some of the other things to consider when you're looking at this as a bid process Where did they put the it room is is it going to be feasible to do that? This was a thing we really had to stare at when we were bidding and I'm going to walk over to the it room and show you why Okay, so now we're in the it room and you can see we're pretty far along we've got you know quite a few drops already in here and We have all the different larger j-hooks here for the pathing And this is what we're going to show you and talk about and what the challenge was now This is not necessarily a bad location for the it room But there is a little bit of a detail you have to notice and the good news is the ceiling tiles are out We could do it But if the ceiling tiles weren't here we would have climbed up and made sure of this And that is this We have the ductwork right in our way along with some pipes now ductwork and piping Not an insurmountable task But you do have to think about these things when you're doing all the paths in here and going All right, how do I get around this? Is it going to be any special challenge? And at the same time you may have noticed the room I'm standing in is not particularly large So you know next question to them not related to us, but it's one of those. Hey before you put all the servers in here Will you have the proper air flow to cool any devices you put in here? Which they right away had the good answer that the HVAC team is going to be putting in split systems in here for cooling So that's going to be great. So when this room gets built out And I'll probably be coming back and revisiting this particular job site when we build the server racks in here And talking about how we do the punchdowns But yeah, that's there's going to be proper venting and cooling in here Speaking of venting and cooling It's a little warm and these are these are your best friend So if you need a way to cool off and Do that in there, but overall it's not been a bad process now There's one other tricky part we had with this one Which is also an unusual consideration you may not have to do But we are on the second floor. So this is something we have to address. I'm going to go find one and show you So I'm telling everybody how we bid it What we got down here. Oh, that's a floor cord come What that is is a recess between this concrete deck that we're standing on And the drop ceiling directly below us in the lower unit. So how is that getting from there to the com room? Well, somewhere else There's another floor core where we can go and bring it through a closet where it's hidden So you don't see it out in the open and then basically we'll have to come through the ceiling tile and find this sucker Yeah in the other suite So this is another aspect when you're bidding it before we call it the price This goes into our prep time in hours that we had to add in there is it sounds like hey Let's just put in our what I think it's going to be kitchen area. Am I correct? Yeah kitchen area Let's just put a couple nice drops here. So it'll come through the table so people can have network drops, but you're like Sounds easy It'll be easier if it came through the ceiling and down, but they wanted it not so Oh, these are all those other this is a quirk of this job I mean, it's better when they have conduit and a pull string so we can pull it there But this is us finding the path which means disrupting the people in the suite below They're not gonna like us. No, they already don't they're like, what are you doing up there? This because the office downstairs is not part of this building In in relationship like they are a separate business and they're like, why do you have to disrupt us to fix What's going on up there? We already have to listen to banging all day At least we're not the only ones. They're not gonna like yeah the electricians have to put power in there Yep. Yeah, they're not gonna like like just neither. So there's two crews That's the other consideration that you really gotta think about while doing these So in summary of everything we did we put this all together We come up with you know average length of cable type of cable. They wanted which was cat 6a plenum specifically was their request We put it all together We come up with an average price per drop that way these changes won't make much of a difference because inevitably there will Be changes before this is said and done Either plus or minus a couple drops places. They thought they could put an office Maybe they're not going to now or they said, hey, it'd be great if we had a couple extra You know printers or some other network attached device over here or over there So that is you know the easy way to do it that way when final billing is done No big deal this bid was already won. So I'm doing all this essentially in past tense to tell you how we bid it But as you've seen from the job, we're already there doing the work. It's you know a done deal Now one of the other things in case you're wondering is we do add and as I said prep work That is a certain number of hours to path everything because you figure out the major trunks of the lines And we have schematics on all this and we'll look at it and go Hey and schematics were provided by the general contractor. We didn't have to actually draw any of these They said this is the layout of the building. These are where the office are going and these are where the drops are going And we need network connectivity. So we'll look at it and go Okay, we're going to put j-hooks all up here and all up here That's your prep time and once you look at the j-hooks and have them all laid out Adding one or more one or two drops or removing two is not going to make any major difference in terms of The number of j-hooks you use and things like that. This is how we can come up with that flat rate price Now the one tricky thing is figuring out exactly how much extra labor to add for Like the duct work that was in the way and going up and over it That was something we had to take into consideration But it's really only when it's coming from like one side The other side can come down and the cable fall will go the other way I do plan to update as we finish out that job and do some more filming like when we start punching it down getting all the rack equipment in there Now the last little thing is yes, it is tricky figuring out the pathing when they start doing those Cours where you got to go downstairs, but we'll coordinate with the electricians because well going into the separate business downstairs is and It's a pain, but it is part of it And that's just something we'll have to deal with those popping ceiling tiles down there because it is on a drop ceiling down there And putting the pathing there and attaching to it You do have to look at that because you have to determine as we had a particular job Where we had to actually drill into because there was no trussing It was a port cement ceiling so there wasn't any trussing to hang onto for the wiring So we had to actually drill into and hammer drilling into cement. Hey, it's absolutely possible But it's an extra piece of labor So that is something you really have to evaluate when the client says that you have to really calculate on that particular part That's why I made sure I showed the hole in the floor there So it all sounds like a good idea and you're like, what we absolutely it's not anything can't be done It's all a matter of budget Final thing I'll mention. How do we get these jobs? This seems to come up in Advoli Well, cool time you got to the bidding process, but I'm not getting to the bidding process. How do I get there? Well, how do you get there is Previously prior to me doing a lot of the youtube stuff, which is our primary and boundary generation I've covered that in a few other videos Chamber of commerce Marketing in general just being out there and present. You can buy google ad words. You can buy facebook I don't know right now in 2020. What's the most effective because we stopped advertising in 2018 and went full time with youtube For our advertising. So I'm not as good on that. I will mention it. At least I'm not aware of any, you know, magical Job boards are posted in terms of like where these bids go out most of time We've never participated in any of those job boards like that Especially for wiring because it always seems to be a race at the bottom We looked at them a couple times and they seem to offer a rate sometimes less than half of what we charge So we've never found them to be the most effective I could be wrong and has been a while since I looked at them. So at least I'll throw that out there That's not my field of expertise. I do know other, you know friends I have who are in this field so much of it just becomes word of mouth once you get You know known into business The word of mouth He's coming in if you do a good job or you hook up with perhaps a franchise or something like that They will often just keep feeding you jobs But a lot of it is you have to really, you know be out there Have people know what you do and do the work right that is hugely important because you don't get a second chance You screw one of these up. Um, they will make sure they never use you again So that's uh, that's an important being sure that you do it all right and keep your reputation This particular job did come um come in as a youtube lead. They watched a few youtube videos I know we did some network engineering work for them Which I think came before any of the wiring work we did their previous building And now we got the bid for this one. Hopefully this was insightful or makes you give you a better understanding of how we do things Uh, if you want to have a more in-depth discussion have a forums dot learn systems dot com If you want to just Put your caps lock on and hammer out. Uh, you're doing it wrong. You're whatever. I'm fine with that too I got that on the last time I talked about bidding and processes, but uh, thank you. All right And thank you for making it to the end of the video If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up if you'd like to see more content from the channel Hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon if you like youtube to notify you when new videos come out If you'd like to hire us head over to laurance systems dot com fill out our contact page And let us know what we can help you with and what projects you'd like us to work together on If you want to carry on the discussion head over to forums dot laurance systems dot com Where we can carry on the discussion about this video other videos or other tech topics in general Even suggestions for new videos. They're accepted right there on our forums, which are free Also, if you like to help the channel out in other ways head over to our affiliate page We have a lot of great tech offers for you and once again, thanks for watching and see you next time