Mrs Bugbear and I have to re-roof our new house. We had a bout of 50 mph winds and it stripped the tabs off about thirty shingles. So for the last couple of weeks I've been soliciting prices for steel for the roof. We decided to go with steel so we never have to re-shingle the roof, we aren't planning on moving.
The quotes were mostly in the range of $5700 to $8900 and everywhere in between. I eventually went with the $5700 quote, not because it was the lowest but rather because it had the fewest errors. I'll pick on the $8900 dollar quote because the errors made for the greatest price difference.
For $8900 I would receive, 66 sheets of 196" steel (I only needed 35) and 17 sheets of 166" steel (I needed 24), 3000 screws (they got this right) 60" of ridge cap (I needed 86'), no wall flashing, no eave starter flashing and 250' of flashing for the raingutters (I needed about 175'). So being an engineer I called and said he missed the wall flashing please give me a price. He insisted I didn't need any wall flashing, I firmly corrected him. Then I broke his quote down into unit prices so I could compare it to the less erroneous quotes. In the end I also got the lowest price but after seeing the errors on the other quotes I made my decision based on lowest error count.
The $5700 even included custom gable end flashing. Which none of the other companies bothered to quote on. I guess the other companies must charge more to cover all the erorrs.
Lowest bidder = the guy trying most anxiously to find a short cut.
ReplyDeleteI think the best bid is usually the second or third lowest, depending on the difference and the project. I rarely think the top bid is the best (they are usually shafting you).
I do think error rate is a reasonable criteria.