Electrical Estimating Labor Units

Durand certified professional estimator with the american society of professional estimators.

Electrical estimating labor units.

The neca labor unit tables include three different labor units for each item. An estimate is only as good as the information it is based on and the neca manual of labor units mlu has been the estimating resource of choice for electrical. Durand has also taught electrical estimating for both the national electrical contractors association neca and california state university san jose. See the simple excel example quantity takeoff sheet below that includes material and labor costs per task and the totals summarized.

For many electrical contractors determining the labor hours required to complete a job can be very intimidating. A labor unit is equal to one man hour. The labor unit breaks down labor into 100ths of an hour to make estimates more precise. If this is the case then how can a standard set of labor units work for all three companies.

The first distinction an estimator must accept is that a labor unit is not absolute. Number of units one electrician can install in one 8 hour day. 8 divided by 250 equals 32 units per day. The labor units manual was written by gary p.

It is a benchmark or starting point. Users of the mlu are also encouraged to consider labor units between the columns or even lower than or exceeding the columns when appropriate. Multiply that amount by the number of crew members to find the number of units the crew is likely to install. Once the labor unit is determined you ll multiply that by the burdened labor cost to determine the labor cost for the task.

Electrical estimating requires a serious time commitment and this goes up. Before you can estimate a job with a fair degree of accuracy you must gain confidence in how to determine the expected labor hours and their. Training video about labor units for installing unistrut electrical estimating software labor unit breakdown. Obviously the answer is no.