Rant: Found out my old boss was padding the takeoff by 15 percent for years

Went back to look at some old job files from 2019 at my last shop, and I noticed every single material takeoff had a flat 15% extra added, no justification. He never told me, just had it baked into the numbers. Anyone else ever catch their old lead doing stuff like that behind the scenes?

3 comments

3 Comments

miles9461mo ago

Honestly that's just shady but not surprising. A lot of old school guys pad numbers like that to cover their own screwups. It's lazy and dishonest but it happens way more than people realize.

rubyschmidt1mo ago

Ask yourself if a flat 15% buffer is really that different from what every GC does with a contingency line item, @miles946. I've seen estimators throw 10-20% on top of concrete or lumber for years just because "wood always gets wasted," and nobody calls it shady. Is padding a bid really a crime if it's just covering for the real world where nothing ever goes perfectly? Your old boss might've been lazy, sure, but he also might've been saving you from having to explain to clients why the job went 12% over because of a surprise foundation crack.

king.derek1mo ago

Alright the thing nobody's talking about is how that 15% buffer probably got baked into his retirement fund too. If he was padding takeoffs that long, dude was basically stealing from the company's bottom line and pocketing the difference on his own bonuses. That's not covering waste, that's just fraud with extra steps.