Estimating
Estimating Support Labor Hours Realistically
Support labor gets underestimated because the estimate covers the task and forgets everything around it.
Break the task into moves, not minutes
Count the physical moves: unload, carry to staging, carry to install point, remove packaging, haul waste out. Each move has its own distance and obstacles.
A 30-minute unload turns into two hours when the material has to go up a flight of stairs and around a corner.
Add the fixed overhead
Arrival, walkthrough, protection setup, and final sweep are usually 45 to 90 minutes total on a residential job, no matter how small the task is.
Use a distance multiplier
Ground floor with driveway access: baseline. Long carry or stairs: add 40 to 60 percent. Elevator building with a loading dock reservation: add an hour for the logistics alone.
Track actuals on three jobs
Write down the estimate and the actual hours for three similar jobs. The gap between them is your personal correction factor, and it is more accurate than any general rule.
Quote a range with a trigger
Give a range and state what pushes it to the high end — extra stairs, additional rooms, waiting on another trade. Clients accept ranges when the reason is concrete.
Estimate the moves and the overhead separately. The task itself is rarely where the hours go.
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