The Twenty Percent That Wasn't

The Alvarez addition is priced and almost out the door. Direct costs — materials, labor, subs, permits — total $80,000 on your estimator's sheet. Your partner wants 'twenty percent on this one,' and your estimator, eager to send it, has typed $96,000 into the bid line: eighty thousand plus twenty percent. Something about the number bothers you on the drive home.