Build the price from the bottom up: quantities, labor hours at a fully burdened rate, materials with tax and waste, equipment, then overhead and profit, then adjust for the GC's contract terms and schedule risk.
Plan reviews connect field conditions, drawings, and the next decisions on a job. AI-generated illustration.
To price work as a subcontractor, start with a quantity takeoff, convert quantities to labor hours using your own production rates, multiply those hours by a fully burdened labor rate, add materials with waste and tax, add equipment and job costs, then add your overhead rate and a profit figure calculated as margin on the selling price. Last, read the GC's bid documents and subcontract terms and adjust for risk: retainage, payment terms, schedule, and scope gaps. A price built this way can be defended line by line, and it tells you exactly how low you can go before you are working for free.
Most underpriced sub bids fail in one of two places: labor at wage instead of true cost, or overhead and profit added as a single guessed percentage. The steps below fix both.
Step-by-step: building a subcontractor price
1. Take off quantities from the drawings and specs
Count and measure everything in your scope: square feet of board, linear feet of conduit, fixtures, devices, openings. Read the specs, not only the drawings, for product requirements and testing. Note anything unclear and send an RFI to the GC before bid day. See how to do a quantity takeoff.
2. Convert quantities to labor hours
Use production rates from your own completed jobs: hours per fixture, per hundred square feet, per device. Adjust for conditions: high ceilings, occupied buildings, night work, small rooms, tight access. If you do not track production yet, start now; your estimating database is your biggest pricing advantage. How to estimate labor hours covers the method.
3. Build a fully burdened labor rate
Start with the wage and add every cost of employing that worker. Some pieces are set by federal law. The IRS lists the employer's share of Social Security at 6.2 percent and Medicare at 1.45 percent. FUTA is 6.0 percent on the first $7,000 of each employee's annual wages, and drops to 0.6 percent for employers entitled to the maximum 5.4 percent credit. State unemployment, workers' compensation, and liability rates depend on your state, trade, and claims history. Add benefits, paid time off, and an allowance for hours you pay but cannot bill. How to calculate labor burden walks through it.
4. Price materials, equipment, and job costs
Get current supplier quotes for major materials and add waste factors from experience. Include sales or use tax as your state applies it to contractors. Add lifts, scaffolding, and small tools, plus permits, freight, dumpsters, and any job-specific insurance or bond costs. For volatile items, note how long the price is good or include an escalation clause; see how to handle material price escalation in bids.
5. Add overhead at your real rate
Overhead is the cost of keeping the doors open: office, estimating, owner salary, trucks not charged to jobs, software, accounting. Divide last year's overhead by last year's direct cost (or field labor hours) to get a rate, and apply it to every bid. See how to calculate construction overhead rate.
6. Add profit as margin, not markup
Decide the margin you want on the selling price and divide cost by one minus that margin. A 10 percent margin means price equals cost divided by 0.90. Adding 10 percent to cost only gets you about a 9.1 percent margin. Markup vs margin in construction shows the conversion.
7. Adjust for contract terms and risk
Read the bid documents and the GC's subcontract form. Retainage held until project closeout, pay-if-paid language, liquidated damages that flow down, a compressed schedule that forces overtime, or a GC known for slow pay all cost you money. Price them or exclude them. Then write clear bid clarifications and exclusions.
Worked example: an electrical sub prices a tenant improvement
Say an electrical sub is bidding the power and lighting scope on a 9,000 square foot office tenant improvement. The takeoff and production rates come out to 420 field hours. The rates below are this example company's numbers; yours will differ by state, trade, and history.
Example burdened labor rate per hour
Component
Per hour
Base wage
$34.00
Employer Social Security and Medicare (7.65%)
$2.60
Federal and state unemployment (example)
$0.90
Workers' compensation (example rate)
$2.40
Liability insurance rated on payroll (example)
$0.70
Health and retirement
$4.50
Paid time off and holidays
$1.60
Unbillable time allowance
$2.30
Burdened rate
$49.00
Example bid build-up
Line
Amount
Labor: 420 hours at $49.00
$20,580
Materials (quotes plus waste)
$18,400
Sales tax on materials (example 7%)
$1,288
Lift rental
$1,600
Permit
$450
Direct cost
$42,318
Overhead at 14% of direct cost
$5,925
Total cost
$48,243
Price at 10% margin (cost divided by 0.90)
$53,600 (rounded)
Profit in this example is about $5,357, which is 10 percent of the price and about 11.1 percent markup on cost. If the sub had priced labor at the $34 wage, added the same materials, tax, lift, and permit, and put 15 percent on top, the number would have been about $41,400, well below its true cost of $48,243. That bid would have "won" and lost money. The subcontract also holds retainage until project closeout, so the sub adds a clarification asking for release at acceptance of its scope.
Pricing change orders as a sub
Use the same build-up for changes, with two differences. First, small changes cost more per unit than base work: a crew pulled off its sequence to add six outlets loses setup and travel time, so price the actual hours, not the base-bid unit rate. Second, check the subcontract for limits on overhead and profit on changes, and for any required format. If the contract caps markup on changes, make sure your burdened labor rate already carries the costs that the cap would otherwise squeeze out.
Price the schedule effect too. If a change adds two days to your work, say so on the change request, or you may be stuck with the time and the overtime later. How to price a change order has a fuller method.
Mistakes to avoid
Pricing labor at wage instead of burdened cost.
Using one percentage for overhead and profit without knowing your overhead.
Confusing markup and margin.
Copying last job's price per square foot without checking conditions.
Ignoring contract terms like retainage and pay-if-paid when pricing.
Cutting the price to match a GC's "target number" without cutting scope.
Smart Business Automator compares estimated and actual hours and cost on each job, so your production rates and burden get more accurate with every bid. See job costing and WIP automation.
Frequently asked questions
How much should a subcontractor mark up a job?+
There is no single number. Start from your actual overhead rate and the profit margin you need, then convert margin to markup. A 10 percent margin requires about an 11.1 percent markup on total cost.
What is a burdened labor rate?+
The wage plus every cost of employing the worker: employer payroll taxes, workers' compensation, payroll-rated insurance, benefits, paid time off, and unbillable time.
Should I price by unit or lump sum?+
Build the price from units either way, because units let you check production. Submit it in whatever format the GC requests, and include unit prices for adds and deducts when allowed.
How do I price retainage and slow payment?+
Estimate how long the money will be held and what it costs you to finance it, then either add that cost or negotiate earlier release. Note your assumptions in the bid clarifications.
A Kiewit-led joint venture just took a major segment of the $7 billion Texas light rail program, one of the largest North American transit awards of 2026. This deep-dive walks contractors through the corridor plans, prime contractor structure, subcontracting opportunities across tunneling, stations, systems, and signaling, prequalification steps, and the Smart Business Automator transit bid board every tier-2 and tier-3 contractor chasing Texas work should have open.
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Read the full episode transcript
Published transcript from Scaling Legends. It may contain transcription errors. View the source transcript.
So the biggest risk on a $7 billion transit project isn't actually laying the rail. Right. It's usually the tiny details that catch people. Exactly. I mean, think about what happens when a local subcontractor's concrete pour for an elevated structure is off by like a quarter of an inch. Oh, man. Suddenly a multi -million dollar transit car won't interface with the track. Yeah, and the entire critical path just halts. Then that interface dispute immediately spirals into a massive legal bloodbath over, you know, who's actually paying to rip up the concrete. That's the reality of mega project heavy civil work. It really is. It's this high stakes environment where margins for error simply... They just don't exist. Right. Especially when we were looking at Kiewit. Right. A total titan in the industry.
Yeah. Calling in around $15 billion in revenue. And they just locked down a major segment of the Texas light rail program. I mean, we're talking a $7 billion program spend here. $7 billion. Yep. And they are not executing every granular detail of this themselves, obviously. They're the orchestrators. That means they're actively looking for tiers of specialized regional subcontractors to absorb that ground -level execution. Which is exactly why we are jumping into this deep dive today. This is phase one of a multi -year, multi -corridor plan linking Dallas -Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. It's massive. It's huge. So if you are a construction business owner, a subcontractor, or a specialty trade anywhere near Texas, what we are unpacking today
is your literal opportunity map. Absolutely. You really can't afford to ignore it. Right. Because if you choose to sit this one out because it feels too complex, well, your competitors are going to secure a five -year backlog. They'll build this fortress of heavy civil experience and leave you fighting for scraps in the commercial sector. Yeah. And to really grasp how to win a piece of this, you have to visualize what Kiewit is actually building. It's helpful to think of a transit line not as a road, but as a horizontal skyscraper stretched across the state of Texas. Oh, I really like that. Horizontal skyscraper. Yeah, it has all the exact same interdependent... Layers, you know, just laid out literally. That horizontal skyscraper analogy perfectly captures the complexity. Because you have the deep foundation, which here is the tunneling and ground stabilization.
Then you have the structural framing, you know, your elevated guideways and the physical stations. You have the nervous system, which is the track work, the electrification, the signaling. Don't forget communications. Right, communications too. And finally, you have the operational interface dealing with the rolling stock and long -term maintenance. So let's break those layers down into actual trades. Where are the entry points for the subs listening right now? Well, if you look below ground, tunneling is a massive sector. I mean, Kiewit will self -perform a lot of the heavy civil, sure. But they constantly look for specialty tunnel bore operations, ground support engineering, and spray applied. concrete liners. So any contractor specializing in deep underground stabilization has a massive runway here. Oh,
huge. And then moving up to the stations, this is where highly capable commercial subs can actually make the pivot into infrastructure. Because, I mean, building a transit station isn't fundamentally different from building a complex commercial facility, right? Not at all. You still need massive structural steel packages, heavy -duty architectural glazing, and those high -wear finishes that can withstand what? 50 ,000 commuters a day? Exactly. And the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing scopes on these stations are just enormous. Plus, you have the specialized installation of transit -grade escalators and elevators. Right, but the environment must shift dramatically when you get to the transit -specific system. Oh, it completely changes. We're looking at intricate fiber -optic network installations, traction power substations, and the physical track work itself. Like the
rail, the ballast, the fastening systems. Yeah, and those highly complex grade crossings where the rail intersects with active local highways. It's intense. So I want to push back on this. for a second. If you're listening right now and running a highly successful, say, $50 million regional operation, hearing this list of specialized scopes sounds really intimidating. Oh, definitely. How does a regional subcontractor actually get their foot in the door with a prime like Kiewit without getting completely crushed by the bureaucracy? Well, you got to view the process through Kiewit's lens. Mega projects run entirely on risk mitigation. Okay. Makes sense. The prime contractor's biggest fear is not that a subcontractor's bid is 5 % higher than the competition. Their ultimate nightmare
is a sub winning the bid, getting six months into a critical path scope, and financially collapsing. Oh, wow. Yeah, because that derails the entire $7 billion schedule. Exactly. So to get in the door, you have to survive their risk mitigation fortress. Let's talk about the bouncers at that door, then. There's a pretty rigid prequalification checklist, right? They're rigid. Texas DOT prequalification is the absolute baseline. Then you have to navigate the Kiewit supplier quality portal. And what about DBE certifications? Huge advantage. If you hold a... disadvantaged business enterprise certification, you have a distinct leg up because federal and state funds mandate really aggressive DBE participation goals on these mega projects.
Got it. And safety is another big one. Safety is an absolute gatekeeper. Your total recordable incident rate, your TRIR, must be strictly under 1 .5. Wow. Strictly under 1 .5. Yeah. If you submit a pre -qualification package with like the 1 .6, the procurement algorithms will probably filter you out before human eyes ever even see your pricing. That's brutal. But I think the hurdle that genuinely shocks regional contractors trying to step up into heavy civil is the bonding capacity requirement. Oh, the bonding math on these transit projects is just brutal. Right, because a lot of established commercial contractors assume bonding is a simple one -to -one ratio. They figure if they want to bid on a $20 million task order for Station Steel, they just need to show $20 million in available bonding capacity. And that assumption will get you disqualified
immediately. Really? Just right off the bat? Oh, yeah. In heavy civil transit subcontracting, primes typically require two to three times the project size in overall available bonding capacity. Wait, so for that $20 million task order, you must prove you have $40 million to $60 million in bonding capacity. Exactly. $40 to $60 million. Which sounds completely unreasonable on the surface. I mean, if the scoop of work is $20 million... Why is the Surety and the Prime demanding a $60 million safety net? They are calculating your concurrent risk. The Prime knows this transit job is not the only project on your books. Right. You might have three other commercial builds happening simultaneously. Exactly. They're stress testing your financial mass. They're asking, what happens if an owner on one of your other
projects delays a $2 million payment by 90 days? Oh, Iso. Do you have the liquidity and the financial buffer to keep making payroll, keep buying steel, and keep your crews mobilized on Kiewit's job? Precisely. That multiplier proves you can absorb a massive financial shock elsewhere without defaulting on their critical path. So how does a construction business owner actually bridge that gap? Because you don't just walk into a surety's office and demand a $60 million line. No, definitely not. You have to start preparing your balance sheet today. Yeah. Means sitting down with your construction CPA, getting fully audited financials, not just reviewed, but audited. And cleaning up your work in progress schedules too, I imagine. Yep. You have to hand the surety a narrative that proves your cash flow is practically bulletproof. That
preparation is so critical because once you lock in the financial backing, you hit the execution constraints. I mean, having the bonding capacity is just the permission to play. Right. You still need the manpower and the machinery to move the dirt. And on a multi -year linear project, the cost models for both are incredibly volatile. Let's dive into that labor volatility first. Since this is public infrastructure, Davis -Bacon prevailing rages apply. Now, every seasoned contractor knows how prevailing wages work, but the complexity really skyrockets when your job site is a rail line stretching across different metro regions. Yeah, because you are crossing county lines. The rates for heavy equipment operators, iron workers, and laborers are rigidly fixed by the specific county where the work takes place. On
a multi -corridor transit project, you might be laying track through five different counties. So the prevailing wage rate for a concrete finisher could literally change at like... Mile marker 42. Literally, yes. And if your estimating team flatlines the labor rate across the entire two -year bid based on your home county, you are going to underbid the job. Oh, you'll win the work, but you'll bleed cash every single week because you are legally mandated to pay higher wages in adjacent counties that you never even budgeted for. And tracking those shifting county -by -county wage indices manually is a recipe for a massive margin fade. Leveraging Smart Business Automator's Market Intelligence report gives you the exact prevailing wage mapping required to build a resilient, multi -county labor cost model without all the guesswork. That is so true.
Eliminating that bidding risk is the only way to survive a multi -year execution. And the same level of rigorous pre -planning applies to your heavy equipment. Oh, absolutely. You are dealing with specialized machinery that simply does not exist on the rental market. Right. You can't just call up your local equipment yard and ask them to drop off a specialized tunnel boring machine or massive grade beams by next Tuesday. They'd laugh you off the phone. Exactly. The supply chain reality of a mega project requires 12 to 18 month lead times for specialized capital expenditures. 18 months. Wow. Yeah. If you wait until Kiewit officially awards you the subcontract to place the order for your heavy machinery, you are instantly a year and a half behind schedule. Which means you have to pre -position. You have
to know the prime's execution schedule and align your procurement strategy months before the dirt actually moves. And again, you can't do that blindly. You really have to rely on data. Definitely. Which is why cross -referencing your procurement timeline with Smart Business Automator's Market Intelligence Report regarding heavy equipment lead times is so crucial. It allows you to see the supply chain bottlenecks before they crush your mobilization schedule. Spot on. So we've established the internal hurdles, you know, securing the multi -tiered bonding, modeling the shifting labor rates, and pre -positioning those 18 -month equipment lead times. But navigating your own operations is only half the battle. You have to look at the external battlefield, too. Oh, yeah. The threat landscape on a $7 billion program is incredibly intense. You're no longer just
bidding against the three local guys you usually see at the municipal pre -bid meetings. When a program hits this financial magnitude, the international heavy hitters mobilize. We're talking about operations like Skanska USA, Granite, Flatiron, Herzog, and Trailer Bros. Right. These are massive, highly sophisticated organizations. How does a regional listener carve out a piece of the pie when these giants are casting shadows over the entire project? You don't try to beat them on scale. You beat them on agility and localization. integration okay explain that well the mega firms have incredible balance sheets but they often lack deep, decades -long relationships with regional material suppliers. So if you have an ironclad local supply chain that guarantees aggressive pricing on raw materials, you bring immediate
value. Or I guess you could form strategic joint ventures. Exactly. You might hold a specific, highly vetted DBE certification combined with a specialized capability like complex traction power substations that the big players usually prefer to sub out anyway. You find the gap in their operations operational armor, and you fill it. That makes a lot of sense. But even when you secure the contract and outmaneuver the giants, the field is covered in operational landmines. What are the specific traps built into these mega project contracts that our listeners need to engineer out of their bids? The design -build rap is arguably the most dangerous. I mean, in traditional commercial construction, you bid on a completed set of engineered drawings. Sure. On a transit megaproject using a design -build delivery method, you're often putting shovels
in the ground while the upstream engineering is only like 60 % complete. Oh man, which guarantees design changes, clashes, and sudden schedule accelerations. Exactly. The prime might experience a three month engineering delay, but the final completion date doesn't move. So suddenly they're demanding you work double shifts and weekends to recover their lost time. And if your contract doesn't clearly define how acceleration directives are compensated, you are funding their delay out of your own profit margin. That's a nightmare. What else should they look out for? Another major blind spot is owner furnished equipment. Often, the transit authority will procure the massive ticket items like the actual transit cars or specialized signaling hardware and provide them to the contractors to install. Which feels like
a win initially because you don't have to finance the purchase. Right, but the trap lies in the delivery schedule. What happens when your highly specialized installation crews are fully mobilized? Your overhead is burning at $20 ,000 a day, and the owner -furnished equipment gets delayed at a port for three months. Oh, wow. Who carries the cost of that downtime? Exactly. You have to explicitly negotiate standby time and demobilization clauses into your contract before you sign. Right. But that actually brings us back to the hook we started with, the ultimate nightmare. Interface risk. Oh, interface risk destroys companies. It is a contractual and physical boundary where your scope of work ends and the next subcontractor's scope begins. Let's return to the elevated guideway example. Okay, so you are the heavy civil sub
pouring the concrete structures. Another highly specialized sub is coming behind you to install the trackwork and signaling. Right. And if your concrete tolerance is off by a fraction of an inch, the trackwork subcontractor cannot lay their rails to the required specification. And the transit cars won't interface correctly. Exactly. The track sub will immediately file a claim stating they cannot proceed due to out -of -tolerance predecessor work. The entire critical path stops. And Kiewit looks at you to fund the multi -million dollar tear -out and rework. Yep. Managing interface risk requires your project managers to proactively coordinate with the adjacent trades before a single yard of concrete is ever poured. You have to clearly define, document, and sign off on
the exact handover conditions. The risks are massive, but obviously the rewards of securing a multi -year infrastructure backlog are generationally transformative for a construction business. Absolutely. Because of the sheer scale and the fierce competition, execution cannot wait until next quarter. The timeline is incredibly aggressive. Once the prime contract is awarded, the first sub -procurement packages typically hit the street in just 60 to 120 days. And 60 days in construction is barely enough time to hold a kickoff meeting. Right. You have to operate with a rapid -fire 90 -day playbook to position yourself ahead of the procurement wave. Let's lay out that playbook then. I imagine step one is just getting inside their digital ecosystem before the algorithms lock you out. You nailed it. Registering with a Kiewit supplier
quality portal inside the first 30 days is mandatory. Procurement teams on these mega projects, they do not blast emails to the public directory. They distribute task orders exclusively through their vetted portal. Exactly. If you're not registered and approved, you are invisible. So once you're in the portal, you need to actually pitch your value. I see so many contractors submit these glossy capability statements that look like, I don't know, truck commercials filled with drone shots and generic marketing copy. What does a mega project procurement officer actually need to see? They need to see a risk mitigation document, not a marketing brochure. That makes sense. Yeah. Your capability statement must explicitly detail your safety TRIR, your current audited bonding capacity limits, your exact specialized trade
experience, and your specific local certifications. Make it frictionless for their procurement officer to drop you into the approved -to -bid pile. And while digital presence is required, FaceTime still moves the needle, even on a $7 billion program. So step three is getting your boots on the ground at the Texas DOT Transit Industry Days. But don't just show up to collect business cards. You need to target the Kiewit Joint Venture Procurement Officers. Your goal is to uncover exactly how they are breaking apart the massive subcontracts. Are they packaging the underground utilities with the flat work? Are they splitting the stations by region? Exactly. You need to know how the pie is being sliced so you can tailor your estimating team's focus. And step four circles back to the financial fortress. Book a meeting
with your surety this week. Yes, do not wait for a bid package to drop to discover you are $10 million short on bonding capacity. Right, you got to map out the audit schedule and the work in progress cleanup required to achieve that two to three times multiplier we talked about. Step five requires locking your estimating team in a room to update the Davis -Bacon labor cost models. Map the exact prevailing wage rates across every single county this rail line intersects. Build the volatility into your baseline estimates today. That way, when the 60 -day bid window opens, you are actually pricing the work, not researching wage indices. And finally, step six, initiate the dialogue with your heavy equipment manufacturers right now. If your scope requires machinery with an 18 -month lead time, you need
to know your exact place in the global supply chain line before you commit to a Prime's aggressive execution schedule. The underlying theme of this entire playbook is preparation outmaneuvering scale. The Texas light rail program is a monumental shift in regional infrastructure. Definitely. Winning a piece of this doesn't require being the biggest contractor in the state. It requires understanding the bureaucracy, engineering the risk out of your bids, and executing your strategy before the competition even realizes the packages have dropped. And you know, while you are mapping out your strategy for phase one, you really need to look at where the industry is heading next. We spent a lot of time talking about labor volatility and equipment lead times today. We did. And the next wave of these transit megaprojects over the coming decade will rely heavily on autonomous
heavy machinery and AI -driven predictive scheduling. to mitigate those exact risks. Wow, yeah. The primes are already piloting this technology. Exactly. If you don't use the revenue and experience from phase one to fundamentally upgrade your own technological capabilities, you won't even meet the baseline prequalification standards to bid on phase two. You won't be competing against contractors with cheaper labor. You'll be competing against contractors who have engineered the labor risk entirely out of the equation. That is the ultimate strategic separator right there. I mean, are you building a business designed to survive the current market dynamics or are you actively engineering an organization equipped to dominate the highly automated multi -billion dollar infrastructure decade ahead Great point to end on. If you know
a contractor who is dealing with trying to break into heavy civil work or looking to secure a multi -year backlog in Texas, send them this deep dive. It could be the roadmap that lands them their next big contract. Absolutely. you on the next deep dive.
