How to Bid Concrete Jobs: Cubic Yards to a Price You Can Defend

How to properly bid a concrete job

Bid from quantities and hours, not from a per-square-foot number you heard somewhere. Measure the pour, turn it into cubic yards, cost every material, estimate crew-hours for each phase, add overhead, and price the total on margin.

I'm not a concrete finisher; I build pricing math. Everything below is arithmetic you can check line by line, and every price, wage and production rate is an assumption you replace with your own supplier quotes and your own crew's pace.

A concrete bid has five blocks:

1. Quantity: cubic yards of concrete, plus base, rebar or mesh, and forms.
2. Materials cost: at what your plant and yard actually charge, including delivery or short-load fees.
3. Labour: crew-hours for excavation and base, forming, placing and finishing, and stripping, at the loaded rate.
4. Equipment: pump, skid steer or plate compactor if you rent them.
5. Overhead and margin: yearly overhead per crew-hour, then divide by (1 − margin).

Concrete pricing calculator: bid a job with your numbers

Enter your crew, hours and total materials below. Break-even shows first, then the bid at your margin.

The free concrete price calculator runs the same maths and shows what markup pricing would cost you in a year. Work out the materials total with the cubic-yard method below first.

What is the formula for calculating concrete in cubic yards?

Cubic yards = length (ft) x width (ft) x depth (ft) / 27. There are 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard (3 x 3 x 3), and depth in inches must be divided by 12 first.

For a 20 x 24 ft driveway at 4 inches: 20 x 24 x (4 / 12) = 160 cubic feet. 160 / 27 = 5.93 cubic yards. Add a waste allowance for uneven subgrade, spillage and form bulge; 10% is used here as an assumption, giving 6.52 yards. Round up to what your plant sells. This example orders 7 whole yards.

Thickened edges, footings and turned-down slabs add volume. Measure them as separate rectangles and add them in. Excel does this in one line; the formula is in the template section below.

Worked example: bidding a 20 x 24 ft driveway

Here is the whole bid, from yards to price. The concrete price of $165 a yard and every other cost is an assumption: replace it with your plant's quote and your own receipts.

Labour assumption: 3 workers over two 8-hour days (dig and base, form and set steel, then pour, finish and strip), which is 16 hours on site, or 30 sq ft of driveway per hour on site (480 / 16).

The $25 wage loads to $33.00 an hour at 32% burden. 48 crew-hours cost $1,584.00. Overhead of $30,000 a year, spread over 3 field staff, 200 days and 8 hours, is $6.25 per crew-hour, so the job carries $300.00. Break-even is $3,604.00. At a 30% margin the bid is $3,604.00 / 0.70 = $5,148.57, or $10.726 per square foot.

If the truck cannot reach the forms, add a pump line to materials. Pumping is a quote from your pump operator, not a number to guess.

Why one price per square foot fails on small jobs

Small pours cost more per square foot because setup, forming, travel and delivery minimums do not shrink with the slab. Bid each job from its own hours, then look at the per-sq-ft figure as a check.

A 10 x 10 ft patio at 4 inches needs 1.23 yards, 1.36 with 10% waste, so this example orders 1.5 yards. Assumed materials: 1.5 yards x $165 = $247.50 of concrete, a $75 short-load fee if your plant charges one, $60 of base, $40 of forms and $30 of sundries, for $452.50. Two workers take a full 8-hour day.

Break-even is $1,080.50, which is $10.805 per sq ft. The driveway broke even at $7.508. Quote the patio at the driveway's rate of $10.726 per sq ft and you would charge $1,073, which is below the patio's own break-even. Set a minimum job price from a calculation like this one.

The common mistake: marking up instead of pricing on margin

A 30% markup is not a 30% margin. Markup multiplies cost by 1.30; margin divides by 0.70, and the gap grows with the size of the job.

• Margin bid: $3,604.00 / 0.70 = $5,148.57.
• Markup bid: $3,604.00 x 1.30 = $4,685.20, which keeps only 23.08%.
• Difference: $463.37 on one driveway.

The other common error is costing labour at the wage. Payroll tax, workers' comp, insurance and paid time off sit on top of every hour. See the labor burden calculator guide and the markup vs margin guide.

Concrete estimate template in Excel: the formulas

A concrete bid sheet needs a quantities block, a materials block and a pricing block. These formulas cover the maths; each result recalculates when you change a measurement.

CEILING rounds yards up to your plant's increment (0.25, 0.5 or 1). It works in Excel and Google Sheets. For a free starting sheet with the pricing block already built, download the Job Pricing Starter; add the yards rows above it.

What to put on a concrete bid sheet

A bid sheet in construction is the form that lists quantities, unit costs and the total you are offering to do the work for. Keep yours to one page the customer can follow.

Bid forms from general contractors often ask which structure you are pricing on. Four common ones: lump sum (one fixed price), unit price (per yard or per sq ft), cost-plus (your cost plus an agreed fee) and time and materials (hours and materials billed as used). The maths in this guide produces the lump-sum figure; divide it by area for a unit price.

What is the 4-2-1 rule for concrete?

The 4-2-1 rule is a site-mix ratio: 4 parts coarse aggregate, 2 parts sand and 1 part cement by volume, as described by ICS Concrete. It matters for hand or mixer batches.

For ready-mix bids it changes little in the pricing: you order by strength and slump, and the plant's per-yard price already covers the mix. If you batch small jobs yourself, cost bags of cement, sand and gravel instead of yards, and add the extra labour hours for mixing.

Spreadsheet, free calculator or estimating software?

Match the tool to your volume. The free concrete pricing calculator checks one bid. A spreadsheet suits a small outfit that wants to see every formula. Takeoff and estimating software suits companies bidding commercial plans every week.

There is no ready-made concrete template in the shop. If you want your mixes, plant prices, crew sizes and a branded bid page in one workbook, the done-for-you custom calculator is a $497 one-time build for Excel and Google Sheets, with one round of revisions. The general method for any trade is in how to price a contractor job.

Step-by-step: How to Bid Concrete Jobs: Cubic Yards to a Price You Can Defend

1. Measure and compute cubic yards. Multiply length x width x depth in feet and divide by 27. Add your waste allowance and round up to your plant's ordering increment.
2. Cost the materials. Price concrete, base, steel, forms, joints and cure at your suppliers' current quotes, plus any delivery or short-load fee.
3. Estimate crew-hours by phase. Hours for excavation and base, forming and steel, pour and finish, and stripping, multiplied by crew size.
4. Cost labour at the loaded rate. Crew-hours x wage x (1 + burden %). A $25 wage at 32% burden costs $33 an hour.
5. Add equipment and overhead. Add pump or equipment rental, then overhead per crew-hour: yearly overhead / (field staff x billable days x 8).
6. Price on margin and check per sq ft. Divide break-even by (1 - margin). Divide the bid by area and compare with past jobs of similar size.

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