Every shop regularly encounters projects that challenge their pricing strategies. Is the price too high to sell the job or is it too low to ensure adequate cost coverage and profitability? Now there’s an opportunity to get help with that conundrum.

The annual FDMC Pricing Survey wants just those kinds of projects to share and collect bids from all across North America. By submitting a project, you have the opportunity to learn what other shops would charge for what you actually did. It’s vital intelligence to better inform your pricing process.

This year’s survey is sponsored by Lockdowel and TradeSoft.

How the survey works
For more than 25 years, the Pricing Survey has collected real jobs done by real shops and shared the bidding specifications to allow other shops to calculate how they would price those same jobs. Then we collect all that data, including individual breakouts for materials, construction hours, shop rates, installation hours, finishing hours, and more. We itemize and sort that data, publishing it in the November issue of FDMC and online at Woodworking Network.

All shops in the survey, including those that provide projects, are kept anonymous, so there is no worry about proprietary information or customer details. We provide analysis and commentary on the results, highlighting problem areas where shops clearly had trouble pricing the work.

What’s in it for you?
For shops that submit projects, it is an unparalleled opportunity to see what other shops would charge the work you do. For shops that provide bids, it’s a chance to compare bidding procedures and results on the same bidding exercise. Some shops with multiple estimators on staff use the survey as a training and fine-tuning tool to make sure all their bidders on staff are working from the same assumptions and standards.

What we’re looking for
To submit a project for the survey, send us the original bidding specifications for the job, including basic drawings, materials and hardware specs, and any additional information that might affect the price of the job. That could include a challenging installation situation, such as an urban high-rise apartment or a job-site far from your shop. We also like to see good photographs of the finished job or at least good computer renderings. That helps bidders visualize the project.

If you have a project you would like to submit, contact us at [email protected] or phone 203-512-5661. We need all projects submitted no later than June 30 so we can create the bid package and attract as many bidders as possible. This is your chance to help solve the pricing puzzles that have vexed you while helping better inform the pricing practices of the entire industry.