Construction costing, billing & estimating models
Job costing, AIA-style progress billing, change orders, bid leveling and equipment rates for general contractors and trade subcontractors.
Who these models are built for
Construction estimating is the most table-native problem in business: burdened labour rates, overhead allocation, cost codes, retainage and pay applications all have to reconcile to each other. Search engines can explain the formula for labour burden; they cannot hand you a workbook where changing the burden rate updates the client quotation, the margin sensitivity grid and the equipment charge rate at once. That is what these five models do.
- General contractors under $50M of annual revenue
- Electrical, mechanical, plumbing and HVAC subcontractors
- Residential remodelers and custom homebuilders
- Independent project managers and owner’s representatives
- Estimators moving off inherited spreadsheets
Contractor job costing & bid estimator
Burden your labour, allocate overhead, then price the job from a real margin instead of a multiplier — and download the cost-code workbook with a client quote tab.
job-costing-model.xlsx · Cost Breakdown & Client Quote · Labor Burden Calculator · Bid & Margin Sensitivity
Schedule of values & AIA progress billing
Build a schedule of values that reconciles to the contract sum, then calculate completed-to-date, retainage and the exact amount to invoice this period.
schedule-of-values.xlsx · Contract Item Master · Application G702 G703 · Retainage Release Ledger
Construction change order log calculator
Price change orders properly — cost impact, markup, delay days and contingency consumption — and see the cumulative change percentage before it becomes a dispute.
change-order-log.xlsx · Change Request Log · Cost Justification · Revised Contract Summary
Subcontractor bid comparison matrix
Level every bid against the same scope, quantify the exclusions, and let the standard deviation tell you which bid is a mistake rather than a bargain.
bid-comparison-matrix.xlsx · Bid Leveling Matrix · Trade Scope Checklist · Selection Justification
Equipment depreciation & hourly cost calculator
Turn a machine’s purchase price, fuel burn and maintenance into a defensible hourly rate you can charge to jobs — including the cost of idle hours.
equipment-hourly-cost.xlsx · Asset Depreciation Table · Operating Cost Inputs · Internal Job Charge Rate
How to cost a construction project in seven steps
- Price the scope, not the wish. Break the work into cost codes and price each with a current supplier quote. Assumptions that are not written down are not estimates.
- Burden every labour hour. FICA, FUTA, SUTA, workers compensation, liability, benefits, PTO and small tools. A wage is not a cost.
- Allocate overhead into every bid. Annual overhead divided by annual direct cost volume gives the rate. If it is not in the bid, it is not in the price.
- Convert margin to markup correctly. A 15% margin is a 17.6% markup. Pricing the two interchangeably is the most expensive arithmetic error in the trade.
- Carry contingency above profit. Three to five percent for scoped work, eight to twelve for renovation. Never fund an overrun out of margin.
- Reconcile the schedule of values. Line items plus approved change orders must equal the contract sum before the first pay application goes out.
- Track committed cost as well as actual. Purchase orders issued are money spent. Review every job at 50% completion, when a variance is still recoverable.
Home improvement and commercial contracting advertisers bid aggressively for this audience, and the intent is commercial rather than consumer — these visitors are evaluating project management and estimating software with mature affiliate programmes.