JLarson
Senior Member
Same but still the whole idea should be to try and avoid outages best as possible. The ISP's field super and I figured out where everything else was with only a little more work.
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Am I out of line?
Same but still the whole idea should be to try and avoid outages best as possible. The ISP's field super and I figured out where everything else was with only a little more work.
You also need to note if anyone got back to you to clear you to do the work. I've had it a few times where they contacted me via computer email to let me know, they were there, had started but had technical issues with their equipment and were working on the problem and I wasn't cleared to dig just yet and the problem was being addressed. The only issue with this is, I checked the email in the morning and there wasn't anything yet, I left the house and headed to the job site and when I got there, their time was up and I started to dig, nobody called me so I didn't know about the technical issues involved. Long story short, we didn't hit anything and if we would have, not exactly sure what would have happened per say, but after some checking I found out technically they were there and had started, but not finished at the exact minute their time was up, they did in fact notify me of an issue that prevented their finishing and I was indeed informed I wasn't cleared to dig quite yet.
So after that ordeal, I've always made sure everyone involved got back to me, in some way shape or form, if nothing is marked or not all the utilities are marked, I call in a no response ticket and tell the call center who wasn't responded yet via phone, not email, you can request a response anyhow you want and its up to the response center to get a verification of some sort as to why they never responded. After about two response calls the attorney general for your state is notified and that office can handle the issue.
Just went through all this a couple days ago, six utilities were in the dig site, five were marked, the sixth told me over the phone, the proper permits were not filled out so they refused to do the locate [WTF is that about] so after I got my attorney involved he too was told the same thing, apparently there was a misunderstanding about something in my write up on the ticket, that if I did the work, a permit was required and none was on file, again WTF it was for a site survey for demoing a house, not the actual demo and a locate can't be refused for any reason by anyone. So after two no response tickets, I'm thinking someone got a royal a** chewing and 5 hours after the locate time was up, I got the phone call stating nothing of their stuff was in the dig site, it was on the other side of the sidewalk two feet away. The guy doing the locate asked what was up and I explained it to him, and he said, you know nothing is in the dig site, why the fuss. The answer was simple, the twit that gave the BS excuse ticked me off and the law clearly states how things are to get done and I now have a known complaint against that person with a track record of having problems, after a certain number of documented complaints and violations, action will get taken against the entity or persons within that entity causing the problem, so if your questioned, just tell whoever the truth, the twit threw the ticket away and it was never given to you to go do the locate.................................
A few years ago, many companies were giving the excuse of putting you on an extended locate list..... [WTF] is that, so after some checking I found out it was indeed nothing but an excuse that doesn't fly legally. They'd call or email you and tell you you've been put on an extended locate list and your not yet cleared to dig, they'd state they now have another x number of days to do the locate. Yes they did contact you, no your not cleared to dig, but legally they can't just give themselves x number of added days to get the locate done. If you agree to it over the phone, they indeed get the x number of days added to their time frame and it is then legal, if you say no, we're digging at the exact minute your times up, their screwed and they have to have it done. Some were pretty cleaver on how they worded it, one went as far as needing someone of my crew on site to explain where their stuff was, so we made an appointment the next working day, which was on a Monday and the locate was supposed to be done by Friday morning, turns out nobody showed up, but they got their three added days to do the locate anyhow because I agreed to wait till Monday when it worked into my schedule to meet them. Others would ask if my equipment and crew was onsite and what time I expected to be there, after I'd tell them they'd then state fine, you said your not there and so then your agreeing we have until that time to get the locate done, giving them the extra time to do it with you agreeing to it being recorded. I think a lot of complaints were made over those ordeals and I've not had anyone try that in the last few years.
So after that ordeal, I've always made sure everyone involved got back to me, in some way shape or form, if nothing is marked or not all the utilities are marked, I call in a no response ticket and tell the call center who wasn't responded yet via phone, not email, you can request a response anyhow you want and its up to the response center to get a verification of some sort as to why they never responded. After about two response calls the attorney general for your state is notified and that office can handle the issue.
Just went through all this a couple days ago, six utilities were in the dig site, five were marked, the sixth told me over the phone, the proper permits were not filled out so they refused to do the locate [WTF is that about] so after I got my attorney involved he too was told the same thing, apparently there was a misunderstanding about something in my write up on the ticket, that if I did the work, a permit was required and none was on file, again WTF it was for a site survey for demoing a house, not the actual demo and a locate can't be refused for any reason by anyone. So after two no response tickets, I'm thinking someone got a royal a** chewing and 5 hours after the locate time was up, I got the phone call stating nothing of their stuff was in the dig site, it was on the other side of the sidewalk two feet away. The guy doing the locate asked what was up and I explained it to him, and he said, you know nothing is in the dig site, why the fuss. The answer was simple, the twit that gave the BS excuse ticked me off and the law clearly states how things are to get done and I now have a known complaint against that person with a track record of having problems, after a certain number of documented complaints and violations, action will get taken against the entity or persons within that entity causing the problem, so if your questioned, just tell whoever the truth, the twit threw the ticket away and it was never given to you to go do the locate.................................
A few years ago, many companies were giving the excuse of putting you on an extended locate list..... [WTF] is that, so after some checking I found out it was indeed nothing but an excuse that doesn't fly legally. They'd call or email you and tell you you've been put on an extended locate list and your not yet cleared to dig, they'd state they now have another x number of days to do the locate. Yes they did contact you, no your not cleared to dig, but legally they can't just give themselves x number of added days to get the locate done. If you agree to it over the phone, they indeed get the x number of days added to their time frame and it is then legal, if you say no, we're digging at the exact minute your times up, their screwed and they have to have it done. Some were pretty cleaver on how they worded it, one went as far as needing someone of my crew on site to explain where their stuff was, so we made an appointment the next working day, which was on a Monday and the locate was supposed to be done by Friday morning, turns out nobody showed up, but they got their three added days to do the locate anyhow because I agreed to wait till Monday when it worked into my schedule to meet them. Others would ask if my equipment and crew was onsite and what time I expected to be there, after I'd tell them they'd then state fine, you said your not there and so then your agreeing we have until that time to get the locate done, giving them the extra time to do it with you agreeing to it being recorded. I think a lot of complaints were made over those ordeals and I've not had anyone try that in the last few years.
JLarson
Senior Member
I've gone through crap with mainly city utilities. Last one, locate called in on a Monday, we were near a RR track so there were like 11 million entities that had to come mark **** lol. Friday rolls around, the guys are digging over the weekend, lowboy is dropping equipment and everyone has located but the town water department.
I made several emails about who's fault it was if we hit something cause they blew off their locate responsibility and calls up the gov food chain till a minion with a can of blue paint appeared like a miracle lol.
I made several emails about who's fault it was if we hit something cause they blew off their locate responsibility and calls up the gov food chain till a minion with a can of blue paint appeared like a miracle lol.
I agree the cities are the worst, but I'd still have filed a no response with one call, after about two no responses, in my area the response center turns it over to the states attorney generals office and they can deal with the idiots in the city. After enough complaints, maybe and thats a huge maybe, something might happen to the city, but in the mean time you have a track record of them not responding to any locates, so in the future if you were to hit a utility they were supposed to mark, you could argue they have a long history of not marking anything and I've had dozens of no repsonses filed to back that up.
Around here the rage is now, with certain counties, instead of cleaning the rural road ditches, they slide the sides of their roads off and narrow them up, use the material they slid off and fill the ditches in instead. In the meantime, they literally cover up the phone peds, some might be only covered by a foot or two, some might be covered up completely so you can't even see where they even were.
So I call in a locate for the local property along one of these roads, and I get a hold put on my locate ticket with no end date for it. The first one I had I got the call stating I'm NOT cleared to dig and my ticket has a hold put on it, had to make some calls to find out what was going on, turns out the phone peds were all covered up by the county and the locate company couldn't find them, so they in turn had to call in their own locate so they can dig to find their ped, then hire someone to do the actual digging, who in turn needs to do their own locate to do the digging, what a circle jerk, so it might take up to a couple weeks before my locate is done and I'm cleared to do my actual digging. I've had up to 20 locates at one time put on a temporary hold for weeks over these idiots, I know the locate people are upset, along with everyone else who's been delayed. Now we automatically know we need three weeks lead time if its in a rural area along a newly graded county road, talk about a paperwork nightmare keeping track of where we can and can't go to get something done. So that whole three days thing to do a locate, just toss that out the window and forget about it completely, its now weeks and legally everyone can get by with it, due to a county who's too lazy to clean its road ditches. I've told the phone companies they had better be charging the county for every hour of time wasted on this ordeal, and the last I was told it was 1700 bucks a ped if you damage one, the county should have to pay that as well, plus the cost to relocate the ped on top of the ground again, and I told one phone company rep, toss in a few grand on top of that for my aggravation, someone might as well collect something from them for that, it seems I can't.
Around here the rage is now, with certain counties, instead of cleaning the rural road ditches, they slide the sides of their roads off and narrow them up, use the material they slid off and fill the ditches in instead. In the meantime, they literally cover up the phone peds, some might be only covered by a foot or two, some might be covered up completely so you can't even see where they even were.
So I call in a locate for the local property along one of these roads, and I get a hold put on my locate ticket with no end date for it. The first one I had I got the call stating I'm NOT cleared to dig and my ticket has a hold put on it, had to make some calls to find out what was going on, turns out the phone peds were all covered up by the county and the locate company couldn't find them, so they in turn had to call in their own locate so they can dig to find their ped, then hire someone to do the actual digging, who in turn needs to do their own locate to do the digging, what a circle jerk, so it might take up to a couple weeks before my locate is done and I'm cleared to do my actual digging. I've had up to 20 locates at one time put on a temporary hold for weeks over these idiots, I know the locate people are upset, along with everyone else who's been delayed. Now we automatically know we need three weeks lead time if its in a rural area along a newly graded county road, talk about a paperwork nightmare keeping track of where we can and can't go to get something done. So that whole three days thing to do a locate, just toss that out the window and forget about it completely, its now weeks and legally everyone can get by with it, due to a county who's too lazy to clean its road ditches. I've told the phone companies they had better be charging the county for every hour of time wasted on this ordeal, and the last I was told it was 1700 bucks a ped if you damage one, the county should have to pay that as well, plus the cost to relocate the ped on top of the ground again, and I told one phone company rep, toss in a few grand on top of that for my aggravation, someone might as well collect something from them for that, it seems I can't.
Willie B
Senior Member
I HATE bid work. Usually I decline bidding. I have to bid lower than some optimist. Your project is simple enough, except for the stuff already in the ground. Finding a fiber optic cable is going to involve a lot of hand work. I'd say you are WAY off in time.
Bidding translates into lowest bid usually, but not always, after all only the lowest of those that bid will end up with the work. So if everyone thinks the same and bids it at four times the price of what it would actually take to do the job, there is a huge profit margin in bid work. Most bids are usually time sensitive meaning they have a completion date and time involved.
A customer of mine, who's son in law got tired of doing the whole lowest bid thing, was busy doing concrete work, site prep type work and ended up with more jobs to bid than he'd ever get done, so the first few times he bid the jobs at four times the usual bid so he didn't have to do it, but kept his company name up for future bids, turns out he got the job anyhow. So as they say, one thing leads to another and before long his standard bid was 10 times what he would normally bid the job at and he was still ending up the winning bidder. So in four years time his company grew from 40 employee's to over 400 and today, he has a full time staff of people doing only one thing, figuring out just how high he can actually bid a job and still end up doing the job, he's also figured out why he got the jobs even with higher bids verses those that bid less, and once he got that figured out, I guess you could say the sky's the limit on potential profits. As he put it, bidding is a scam and sham just waiting for a sucker to bite and take the bait and the best part is, they come to him, he doesn't even have to go looking. So that whole low ball bidding............................not everyone has that same mentality. Its not always about low price, there is a host of reasons why some do things, if you can figure out why bids are taken and why sometimes the low ball bid isn't the winning bidder, you'll have a much better handle on your own business and also profits, if your only thinking lowest price wins, your going to go broke very fast. As they say there is profit and potential in every job, if your doing the same exact same thing as everyone else the exact same way, you really offer little valve to anyone else, after all anyone can do it, if you can figure out where you excel and basically nobody else can figure that out, and customers notice and want your skills, then your not really bidding against anyone else, your bidding against yourself...............so keep that in mind as well, its all in how you view it.
Low ball bidding, I'd not waste my time even looking at the job, now if it takes a certain skill set, one that few posses but I do, then I'm all over like a wet sweat. Take it for what its worth.
A customer of mine, who's son in law got tired of doing the whole lowest bid thing, was busy doing concrete work, site prep type work and ended up with more jobs to bid than he'd ever get done, so the first few times he bid the jobs at four times the usual bid so he didn't have to do it, but kept his company name up for future bids, turns out he got the job anyhow. So as they say, one thing leads to another and before long his standard bid was 10 times what he would normally bid the job at and he was still ending up the winning bidder. So in four years time his company grew from 40 employee's to over 400 and today, he has a full time staff of people doing only one thing, figuring out just how high he can actually bid a job and still end up doing the job, he's also figured out why he got the jobs even with higher bids verses those that bid less, and once he got that figured out, I guess you could say the sky's the limit on potential profits. As he put it, bidding is a scam and sham just waiting for a sucker to bite and take the bait and the best part is, they come to him, he doesn't even have to go looking. So that whole low ball bidding............................not everyone has that same mentality. Its not always about low price, there is a host of reasons why some do things, if you can figure out why bids are taken and why sometimes the low ball bid isn't the winning bidder, you'll have a much better handle on your own business and also profits, if your only thinking lowest price wins, your going to go broke very fast. As they say there is profit and potential in every job, if your doing the same exact same thing as everyone else the exact same way, you really offer little valve to anyone else, after all anyone can do it, if you can figure out where you excel and basically nobody else can figure that out, and customers notice and want your skills, then your not really bidding against anyone else, your bidding against yourself...............so keep that in mind as well, its all in how you view it.
Low ball bidding, I'd not waste my time even looking at the job, now if it takes a certain skill set, one that few posses but I do, then I'm all over like a wet sweat. Take it for what its worth.
Willie B
Senior Member
I'm more an electrician.
I get calls for installation of a paddle fan, homeowners are looking for up front pricing. I tell them over the phone, $300. never hear from them again.
Most projects involve a bunch of unknown pitfalls. I predict them, someone else gets the job.
In my experience, the only way to be low bidder is to cut your own throat.
A very few exceptions. At the beginning of Covid a family wanted 100 items a home inspector had cited. They had sold their 200 year old home, & would be moving out 2 weeks before the closing.
I gave a price. The seller continued to shop for a better price. A few days before move out, he called in a panic, wanted us to start. I responded: "I thought you were shopping for a better price."
I gather he couldn't find an optimist electrician.
I get calls for installation of a paddle fan, homeowners are looking for up front pricing. I tell them over the phone, $300. never hear from them again.
Most projects involve a bunch of unknown pitfalls. I predict them, someone else gets the job.
In my experience, the only way to be low bidder is to cut your own throat.
A very few exceptions. At the beginning of Covid a family wanted 100 items a home inspector had cited. They had sold their 200 year old home, & would be moving out 2 weeks before the closing.
I gave a price. The seller continued to shop for a better price. A few days before move out, he called in a panic, wanted us to start. I responded: "I thought you were shopping for a better price."
I gather he couldn't find an optimist electrician.
Septic installation is a great example in the excavation industry, everyone bids the job, a home owner will get a dozen bids and takes the lowest bid almost every time. I refuse to bid them at all, period, a complete waste of time. Years pass and all of the sudden they have issues, have several people in to fix it, who don't actually fix it, they call for bids on the repairs each time. A year or two pass again and still its not fixed and working, again bids are taken on the repair, this time around anyone who's been there before is eliminated and not called. So with enough time, the home owner runs out of people to bid on this job, so when your down to about one, ME, I bid it so high, as in thousands over what it should cost, I will eventually end up with the job, having seen so many, there are only a few options left at that time to fix the problem, each costing a few hundred bucks, so in total we're dealing with maybe 600 bucks to fix it, by bidding a few grand, its usually only one issue at a couple hundred, with bid in hand I do the repair in a few hours and I'm gone, two grand in hand and I can then move onto the next one...............only having to wait it out till the homeowner gets tired of the unfixed issue. At about 1500-1800 dollars profit for a few hours time [if I drag my feet to take that long] its far more profitable than installing new septic systems and dealing with sanitarian and the paperwork and spending a day or two doing the install at a rock bottom price of making nothing. The only thing I need to ask upfront is, how many times has the system been looked at, who looked at and worked on it, and how long has this been an issue, that's all I need to know where the homeowner is in the repair stage to know when to bid and what to bid, each time before the end and final deal, I just say I'm too busy to bid this go around, if the problem persists, contact me later, or ask who recommended me, if its a bank or prior customer, they know the drill and the cost and I know its time for me to bid the repair...............and a couple grand a system, times how many systems I can fix per year, with virtually nothing invested and gain the reputation on how to solve the problem via banks and homeowners, its actually quite lucrative if your into that sort of thing, after all, everyone wants to install new, nobody wants to repair or fix something old. If anyone actually figures out what are the root causes of the septic not working, the gig might be up and others might jump on the bandwagon and take the work, which is no bid deal, there are literally hundreds of other opportunities out there for similar things involving bid jobs, now if the owners are trusting and cost conscious and willing, then the price has to be throttled back considerably, with trust comes far more work with just a phone call, with enough phone calls, those gravy money trains tend to dry up somewhat, but other work picks up to take its place, in the end it all washes out in the form of overall profit. With enough jobs and some reputation behind you, nobody questions the costs and basically nobody cares about costs, they just want their stuff to work like it should, again there's a nice profit, so the question remains, who wants to low bid anything and waste their time competing against all the other low ball bidders to see who can go broke first??