All the estimating know-how lives in one person's head.

In many electrical shops, one person really knows how to price the work. Maybe it's the owner, maybe a longtime estimator. Others can walk a job, but every number goes through that one person, and so does every bid.

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A gray-haired veteran electrician studying an open breaker panel in a garage with a flashlight, coils of wire hanging on the shelves beside them — Photo by Kathleen Austin Kuhn on Pexels

Sound familiar?

When your estimator is out sick or on vacation, the bids just wait.
A newer estimator can do the takeoff, but the final number still has to go across one desk.
Ask why a job was priced the way it was, and the answer is a feel for it that nobody ever wrote down.
You'd rather not think about what happens to your bidding if that person ever leaves.

What it costs you

Everything backs up behind one desk. The shop can only quote as fast as one person can think, so growth stalls there.

The shop gets fragile. If that person leaves, gets hurt or just burns out, years of pricing judgment walk out with them.

New estimators take a long time to get good, because they learn by sitting next to someone who's too busy to teach.

And if the know-how is yours, you can't step back. Every bid still lands on you, no matter how much else you hand off.

Why it keeps happening

Estimating judgment builds up job by job: which GCs run tight schedules, which older buildings hide trouble behind the walls, how long a certain kind of job really takes your crews. Very little of it gets written down.

The person who knows it all has no time to write it down, because they're busy using it.

Old estimates and job results are scattered across folders, spreadsheets and email, so they don't add up to anything a new person can learn from.

And nobody plans for it until the person is already halfway out the door.

Who you'll talk to

Kevin Kirchner smiling, in black glasses, a black cap and a green plaid shirt — Kevin Kirchner

I'm Kevin Kirchner, an AI enablement specialist at True Frontier. You'll talk with me, and I'll ask who prices the work at your shop, what happens to bids when they're away, and where the history of past jobs lives.

Digging through old jobs and past bids for an answer is busywork that no longer has to sit with your estimator. Your shop's setup decides the rest, and that's what the call is for.

Questions

Why is it so hard to train a new electrical estimator?

Much of the skill is judgment built from past jobs, and it rarely gets written down. A new person learns by watching, and the person they'd watch is the busiest one in the shop.

What happens if my estimator leaves?

Bids slow down or stop until someone else can price with confidence. That's why it's worth thinking about before it happens, not after.

What if I'm the one who holds all the know-how?

Then the bottleneck is you. If every bid goes through you, the shop can't grow past your hours, and you can't step away. That's worth a conversation.

What exactly do you build?

It depends on how you work today; we figure that out on the call.