When you refer to x dollars per drop are you talking about a physical location or the actual number of terminated runs? For example if a single location has both a data and a phone line is that one or two drops?
CIAO!
Ed Nielsen CENCOM
Robert R Kircher, Jr. wrote:
I charge them as two drops. You would not believe the amount of people ask me why it is that way. LOL
Im like, well you have an extra 250 feet of plenum cabling, jack, and more work installing 2 cables than one cable.
Joe Perkowski
Pulling two cables to s single location is not as much work as installing one cable to one location and another cable to another location.
When I'm pricing a job, I consider the number of locations to be wired (regardless of the number of cables going to that location), the total number of cables, and the number of times I'll have to pull cables to a location (in the event that I can't pull all of them at once).
Why can't I pull all of the cables to a location at the same time? It's either too difficult to pull them as a one-man operation, or I don't have enough boxes or reels to pull from.
I don't usually plan on pulling more than 8 or 10 cables at a time, but it really depends on how far the run is and how many turns I have to make.
Your example is two (2) separate drops, and you should price them this way, too. Each has its own cable, jack, port on the patch panel. The share a faceplate, but that's a $1.20 item, which is negligible compared to other, separate, costs.
Thanks dmitri and everyone else, for the info, this is what I expected but I wanted to make sure. BTW I agree with you, after all every wire pulled needs to be terminated at both ends and tested and IMHO terminating and testing is the real job anyway. I also agree with you on the economies of scale. I can see a large job getting way out of hand very quickly. I can also imagine that the type of client would play into your final pricing as well. Many small/midsize companies need the drops but certainly can't afford a price per drop that a larger company could.
In any event thanks again for the info.
True, but if someone is asking you "what is the price per drop?". It is MUCH safer to give out the price for the individual cable. You will (if lucky) end up with some little spare change by saving some time pulling or at least make what you were hoping for. You may not even save ANY time at all, depending on whether or not you have to pay installers (if other than yourself) in hourly, half day or full day increments. All of this is extremely difficult (and too intimate for your business) to explain to a customer. Therefore, I would set it straight from the beginning: one drop means one cable, one jack, one patch panel port. If it just happens to be in the same faceplate with other cables, well, it will not affect the price.
All of this applies, of course, if talking about pricing out reasonably limited amount of cables. On larger amount of cables the customer is rightfully expecting some economy of scale, but it is normally not what people are interested in when asking about single drop price. The single drop price is usually brought up when expecting just a few additional drops here and there.
Of course not, but, I always explain this to my customers. For some strange reason, they think the 2nd cable is a freebie. It isnt though, I still have to pay the the cable and jack.
I also do this, but, most important to me is the cable lengths. I charge more for runs beyond 200 feet, compared to runs shorter than 200 feet. The price per drop price has become very competitive here in NY.
Well, you see if I get a job for like 12 drops, where all cables are about 80 - 90 feet in length. Ill build an extra box into the job, so I dont have to waste time pulling from one box. I always do this.
Ya thats about it with me too.
About $30 for 200' plenum, and $10 for jacks (both ends), plates/etc. A few minutes for terminating and a few more for testing. Not free, but not huge compared to the 0.5-1.0 hours it takes to fish & pull 200' (including helper time).
Certainly. More material & take longer to fish & pull.
Perhaps you should give discounts for multiple cables to one drop, or back-to-backs. Price'em as 1-gang drops,
2 gang & 4-gang.-- Robert
Well, it can be anywhere from $85 to $135 for Cat 5e depending on the customer.
I usually sell 1 Cat 5e drop $95 to $110. This includes cable, installation, jack, termination and testing.
A LOT of people are putting Cat 6 in NYC, but, I cant sell one foot to a school district of that stuff, except for gigabit runs between close closets.
Are you going with CAT 6 wire and CAT 5E jacks and patch panels?
I looked at CAT 6 for my project and found it to be almost twice as expensive as CAT 5E. I'd be hard pressed to sell that to my client base (small to mid size firms) even those who spend for the future.
Well, CAT6 sells to schools pretty well in my opinion. Besides, in most recent school bids CAT6 is the one that gets specified. I would guess it's not because CAT6 suddenly found its place in the cable plant (IMHO it's still a redundant link between CAT5E and CAT6+ (E? A?)) but because people feel safer when putting something relatively new into a new construction project. This way they think they will not have to go back and uproot everything in just a few years.
Well, again, I see no shortage in school CAT6 project, so maybe you should tweak something in your selling process?
Good luck!
I do not really believe in much (any?) savings in the CAT6 cable - CAT5E connectivity as a transition path for those who can't swing for CAT6 right away. Most costs are loaded (at least in my neck of the woods) in labor. Cable pulling labor is almost the same. There are subtle time variations, discussed here just recently in great detail, but generally it is the same for rough estimation purposes. But you will have to consider doing terminations twice, rolling the trucks and mobilizing the installer team twice, disconnecting all the existing equipment, disrupting people's workplaces for the time of re-terminations, re-connecting and subsequently troubleshooting active equipment. Problems start snowballing on you and eating into whatever savings you had made by not doing proper CAT6 in the first place.
If the customer cannot afford CAT6 (these days it rather CAT6+, but it's a theme for a whole different discussion), they will do just fine with CAT5E for the next 3 years or more. After which time they can call you back and redo the cabling if it becomes a bottleneck for their network.
Twice for the total of parts+labor ?
No just parts.
As an example
I have tried. All computer people at school districts I work with dont even ask for it. Heck, with today's shrinking budgets its a hard sell in most districts except the rich ones. To me they all seem content with Cat 5e for now.
Well, maybe in new constuction. But, 99% of the schools Im in its still Cat 5e.
This way they think they will not have to go back and uproot
People dont even ask me about it. I have seen 1 school here on Long Island that has a large Cat 6 investment, other than this one most schools are still using old Cat 5 and Cat 5e.
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