[thelist] What would you do? -- pricing and estimating

[Erik]

About the original topic of this thread ... they probably sent the 
other bid because it described what they wanted and didn't want to 
spend time writing it in their own words - or it described it better 
then they could, or they didn't understand it and gave it to you 
because they wanted to see if it made sense to someone else. BTW, I'm 
surprised others objected to the notion of a bid being passed around 
outside of the client. Myself, I relish being able to size up the 
competition and am not embarrassed of my own bids.

>  > The contractor we've hired to do a lot of our work got smart
>>  after doing a fixed-price project that took about four months
>>  longer than they expected. They now give us fairly loose
>>  estimates based on how many hours of work they think something
>>  might take and then charge us by the hour.
>
>I'm curious how people feel about doing this. Just because something is
>project-priced doesn't mean it can go on forever. When a client signs my
>contract, they're also signing a timeline. However, I start itching when it
>comes to these issues because I wonder where my leeway is.

I think it's great for freelancers; I don't think I'm alone in the 
fact that a lot of the people that come to me don't know what they 
want until they see things taking shape (even if they THINK they know 
what they want). And I can waste more than entire day defining the 
parameters for what a contract priced job.

I've been doing a "ceiling/floor" thing recently, which has been 
working out way groovy ... allows me to waste less time worrying 
about things other than the actual work. I tried to get people to 
agree to this for a long time, and was always unsuccessful until I 
learned how to ask for it; have been batting 100% since.
-- 
- Erik Mattheis

http://gozz.com/
(612) 827 3963