Price Every Job Right — and Keep the Profit
Pipe & Price Pro gives independent plumbers a field-tested system for material takeoffs, labor costing, and winning bid documents — so you stop leaving money on the table and start running jobs that actually pay.
"A job priced right is a job worth doing — and I'll show you exactly how to get there, every time."— Mark
What you'll learn
What you'll be able to do
- Build a complete material takeoff from a set of blueprints, accounting for every fitting, pipe run, and fixture
- Calculate accurate labor hours for residential and light-commercial plumbing scopes using proven productivity rates
- Apply overhead, profit margins, and contingency buffers so every bid covers your true cost of doing business
- Use digital estimating tools and spreadsheet templates to produce fast, professional bid documents
- Identify common estimating mistakes — underbidding, scope gaps, change-order traps — and systematically avoid them
- Present and defend your estimate to general contractors or homeowners and negotiate without leaving money on the table
How it works
A school that adapts to you
This isn't a set of static videos. Every lesson is generated live and tuned to where you actually are.
We learn your level
A quick placement check tailors your starting point so you're never bored or lost.
Lessons adapt as you go
Each lesson is written for your pace and your goal, adjusting as your skills grow.
Your AI coach keeps you moving
Checkpoints, feedback, and gentle nudges turn progress into a real result.
The curriculum
What's inside your school
6 modules · 19 lessons
The Estimator's Mindset & Blueprint Literacy
Establishes the foundational thinking, vocabulary, and document-reading skills every plumbing estimator must have before touching a single number. Students learn how a bid is structured end-to-end, how to decode blueprints and specifications, and how to scope a job accurately before the first takeoff line is drawn. This module is the essential prerequisite for all quantitative work that follows.
- 1.1How Estimating Works: The Anatomy of a BidIncluded
- 1.2Reading Plumbing Blueprints & SpecificationsIncluded
- 1.3Scope Definition & Pre-Bid Site AssessmentIncluded
Material Takeoffs: Counting Every Piece
Develops the systematic, zone-by-zone methodology for quantifying every material item in a plumbing scope — pipe footage, fittings, fixtures, equipment, hangers, insulation, and specialty items — while correctly applying waste and overage factors. By the end of this module students can produce a complete, verified material takeoff from a full set of blueprints.
- 2.1Takeoff Methodology: Systems & ZonesIncluded
- 2.2Pipe Runs, Fittings & Waste FactorsIncluded
- 2.3Fixture, Equipment & Specialty Item TakeoffsIncluded
- 2.4Takeoff Verification & Quantity ControlIncluded
Labor Costing: Hours, Rates & Productivity
Teaches students to convert material quantities into accurate labor hours using proven productivity rates, then build those hours into a true all-in labor cost that reflects wages, burden, benefits, crew composition, and real-world efficiency losses. Covers both residential and light-commercial scopes and equips students to adjust rates for job-specific conditions rather than applying a single flat figure.
- 3.1Understanding Labor Productivity RatesIncluded
- 3.2Calculating True Labor Cost: Burden, Benefits & Crew MixIncluded
- 3.3Adjusting Labor for Scope Complexity & Job ConditionsIncluded
Building the Complete Bid: Overhead, Profit & Contingency
Teaches students to assemble direct costs into a complete, fully-loaded bid by layering in company overhead, an appropriate profit margin, and a calibrated contingency buffer. Covers the distinction between markup and margin, how to calculate a company's true overhead rate from financial statements, how to price permits and subcontractors, and how to account for the hidden costs that routinely erode profit on jobs that look fine on paper.
- 4.1Calculating Your True Overhead RateIncluded
- 4.2Profit Margins, Markup vs. Margin & Contingency BuffersIncluded
- 4.3Subcontractors, Permits & Hidden CostsIncluded
Digital Tools, Templates & Bid Documents
Equips students with practical proficiency in the digital tools and document formats used by professional plumbing estimators — from custom spreadsheet templates to dedicated takeoff and estimating software — and culminates in producing a complete, polished bid proposal package that a GC or owner can act on immediately.
- 5.1Building Your Master Estimating SpreadsheetIncluded
- 5.2Introduction to Digital Estimating SoftwareIncluded
- 5.3Writing a Professional Bid Proposal DocumentIncluded
Avoiding Mistakes, Winning Bids & Negotiating Profitably
Synthesizes the entire curriculum by addressing the behavioral, strategic, and interpersonal dimensions of estimating success: recognizing and avoiding the most costly systematic mistakes, presenting estimates with confidence and data, handling objections, and managing change orders so that profit earned in the estimate is not surrendered during construction. This module functions as an applied capstone.
- 6.1The Most Costly Estimating Mistakes — and How to Avoid ThemIncluded
- 6.2Presenting & Defending Your EstimateIncluded
- 6.3Change Orders: Protecting Your Profit After the ContractIncluded
Who it's for
Is this you?
The Solo Plumber
Running your own truck and tired of underbidding jobs that eat your time and margin — this course gives you a repeatable pricing system that actually covers your costs.
The Apprentice on the Rise
Ready to understand the business side of the trade and position yourself for a project management role before your journeyman ticket is even in your hand.
The Small Contractor
Managing a crew and juggling multiple bids — you need a consistent, professional estimating process your whole operation can rely on.
The Residential Specialist
Great at the work, but new to bidding remodels and new builds competitively without leaving profit on the floor or overpricing yourself out of the job.
The Light-Commercial Bidder
Making the jump from residential to commercial work and needing to produce accurate, professional bid packages that hold up to GC scrutiny.
The Change-Order Victim
Constantly doing extra work that never seems to make it onto an invoice — this course shows you how to price, document, and defend every change order.
Questions
Frequently asked
Your teacher
A note from your teacher
Mark
If you've ever finished a job, done the final accounting, and wondered where the money went — you're not alone. It's one of the most common and most painful experiences in this trade. You worked hard, your crew showed up, the work was good — and the job still didn't pay what it should have. Nine times out of ten, that problem started before you ever swung a pipe wrench. It started at the estimate.
I built this course because the plumbing trade does a great job of teaching people how to sweat pipe and run drain lines. It does a terrible job of teaching people how to price work. Most of us learned estimating by watching someone else do it, picking up habits we couldn't even explain, and hoping the numbers worked out. Sometimes they did. A lot of the time, they didn't — and we absorbed the loss and moved on.
Pipe & Price Pro is the course I wish existed when I was figuring this out. It covers the whole system: reading blueprints the right way before you start counting anything, building a material takeoff zone by zone so nothing gets missed, calculating labor with real productivity rates instead of gut feel, and building a complete bid that includes your actual overhead, a real profit margin, and a contingency buffer for the surprises that always show up. Then it covers the part most estimating courses skip entirely — how to put that number in front of a GC or a homeowner, stand behind it, and protect it when the scope starts to creep.
Every lesson is built around real-world plumbing work. There are no hypothetical widgets or generic construction examples. The numbers, the templates, the mistakes we walk through — all of it is grounded in actual plumbing scopes and actual field conditions. You'll walk away with a repeatable estimating process you can use on your next job, and the job after that, and keep refining as your business grows.
If you're ready to stop guessing and start pricing with confidence, pull up a stool. Let's get into it.
— Mark
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- 6 modules, 19 lessons
- AI-adaptive lessons tuned to your level
- Quizzes & checkpoints to lock in progress
- Your own AI learning coach
- Learn on any device, at your pace
- Full access for as long as you're subscribed