Dirt Work Bid School: The Full Course Outline
Every module and every lesson in Dirt Work Bid School, with an honest state marker on each one. 50 lessons, 19 written and 31 still being filmed.
Who it is for. Anybody deciding whether the course is worth their money, and anybody who wants the structure of a bidding curriculum to work through on their own.
This sheet is not tied to one module. It applies at any stage of a job.
Where this course is, honestly
Dirt Work Bid School is eight modules and 50 lessons. 19 of those lessons are written from sourced material. The other 31 are outlined and still being filmed.
This outline marks the state of every single lesson, because a course outline that hides which parts do not exist yet is a sales page pretending to be a syllabus. Nothing below is filler and nothing below is promised as finished when it is not.
The eight modules run in the order a job actually happens: read it, cost it, price it, recover overhead, survive the contract, get on the list.
What the course is
Eight modules built from real Checkered Flag jobs, carried from the site walk to the signed contract to what it cost when it was done. Taught by Jay Voisey, who has bid dirt work in Jefferson County, Missouri for twenty-five years. Not a course about growing a company. A course about the next bid.
It is built from real Checkered Flag Excavation jobs, carried from the site walk to the signed contract to what the job cost when it was finished. Checkered Flag was founded in 2000 in De Soto and Festus, Missouri, and is family owned.
It is not a course about growing a company. It is a course about the next bid.
Start Here: What This Course Is, and What It Will Do To Your Win Rate
You know what you are about to learn, in what order, and what the first sign of it working looks like.
| Lesson | State |
|---|---|
| 0.1 How this course is built, and how to work through it | Written |
| 0.2 Your win rate is going to fall. That is the course working. | Written |
Not one of the eight modules.
Module 01. Read the Site Before You Price It
You know what a man with twenty-five years in actually looks at when he walks a job, in the order he looks at it, and you can get from a set of plans to a yardage you trust. 5 lessons, all outlined and still being filmed.
| Lesson | State |
|---|---|
| 1.1 Walking the site in the order he walks it | Being filmed |
| 1.2 From plans to a number of yards | Being filmed |
| 1.3 What the plans never tell you | Being filmed |
| 1.4 The one-page bid sheet, filled in from the top | Being filmed |
| 1.5 If you got this one wrong, where would it have gone wrong | Being filmed |
Module 02. Swell, Shrink and the Real Yardage
You stop eating the difference between the dirt you dig and the dirt you haul, because you can put a number on it before you bid. 4 lessons, all outlined and still being filmed.
| Lesson | State |
|---|---|
| 2.1 Bank, loose and compacted: three numbers for the same dirt | Being filmed |
| 2.2 His rule of thumb, and how far it bends | Being filmed |
| 2.3 Shrink, backfill and the dirt you end up buying | Being filmed |
| 2.4 Where the difference gets eaten | Being filmed |
Module 03. What Your Machine Actually Costs You
You replace the machine rate you invented with one built from your own payment, your own fuel, your own wear and your own insurance. 5 lessons, all outlined and still being filmed.
| Lesson | State |
|---|---|
| 3.1 What it costs before it turns a track | Being filmed |
| 3.2 Everything that comes off it in a year | Being filmed |
| 3.3 The truck and the trailer nobody costs | Being filmed |
| 3.4 The rate, and the arithmetic behind it | Being filmed |
| 3.5 Buying the iron: his winter rule | Being filmed |
Module 04. Haul, Downtime and the Hours Nobody Bills
You can put a price on a move, an idle hour and a forty minute haul instead of absorbing all three. 4 lessons, all outlined and still being filmed.
| Lesson | State |
|---|---|
| 4.1 Pricing haul by distance, not by feel | Being filmed |
| 4.2 The move, and whether the customer pays for it | Being filmed |
| 4.3 Downtime: the hours that leave the job and never come back | Being filmed |
| 4.4 Why the man who ignores this wins the bid | Being filmed |
Module 05. Hourly, By the Foot, or Lump Sum
Three ways to price the same job, and how you tell which one this job wants. 8 lessons: 6 written, 2 still being filmed.
| Lesson | State |
|---|---|
| 5.1 Most of what he prices is not a lump sum | Written |
| 5.2 The rule: if it is a hard job, it goes time and material | Written |
| 5.3 Billing time and material so the customer would sign it again | Written |
| 5.4 Lump sum, and what he leaves on the table on purpose | Written |
| 5.5 Being the expensive one, and making it stick | Written |
| 5.6 Losing seven out of ten, and the difference between two kinds of losing | Written |
| 5.7 Unit pricing: by the foot, by the yard, by the pad | Being filmed |
| 5.8 One job, priced three ways | Being filmed |
Module 06. Overhead Recovery and Where the Money Goes
You can be busy all year, win everything you bid, and still finish with nothing. This is why. 5 lessons, all outlined and still being filmed.
| Lesson | State |
|---|---|
| 6.1 Everything you pay for that is not on a job | Being filmed |
| 6.2 How much comes off every hour you bill | Being filmed |
| 6.3 Margin versus markup | Being filmed |
| 6.4 Reading the losing job backwards | Being filmed |
| 6.5 The write-offs nobody puts in the overhead | Being filmed |
Module 07. The Contract Clauses That Eat the Profit
You priced it right, you won it, and you still lost. Nobody teaches this part. 7 lessons: 4 written, 3 still being filmed.
| Lesson | State |
|---|---|
| 7.1 The other man's number was lower because he only priced half the job | Written |
| 7.2 What being the honest number costs you, and what it pays | Written |
| 7.3 When the customer finances the job on you | Written |
| 7.4 What a promise to finish is actually worth | Written |
| 7.5 Retainage and pay-when-paid | Being filmed |
| 7.6 Differing site conditions: the sentence that decides who pays | Being filmed |
| 7.7 Change orders, and the five clauses that cost a man $47,000 | Being filmed |
Module 08. Getting on the List, and Walking Away From the Rest
How you stop bidding against six guys in a driveway and start bidding work worth having. 12 lessons: 9 written, 3 still being filmed.
| Lesson | State |
|---|---|
| 8.1 Be real or be out | Written |
| 8.2 What general liability actually costs, and how they bill it | Written |
| 8.3 The audit at the end of the year is the one that gets people | Written |
| 8.4 Workers comp, one claim, and three years of paying for it | Written |
| 8.5 Insurance is a game. Learn to play it. | Written |
| 8.6 Who to buy it from | Written |
| 8.7 Bonding, from a man who stayed out of the bonded lane on purpose | Written |
| 8.8 Getting on the list | Being filmed |
| 8.9 The licence stack, and what each one opened up | Being filmed |
| 8.10 The jobs he will not bid | Written |
| 8.11 The last walk-away is walking away from volume | Written |
| 8.12 What to do on Monday | Being filmed |
What this course does not contain
No customer testimonials, because Checkered Flag has never published one and none will be invented to fill the gap.
No revenue figures, margin figures or company financials. None of those are verified and none of them are anybody's business but his.
No claim that any of this has been taught before. It has not. This is the first time the material has been put into a course, and the recordings that fill it are being made now.
Where a module is marked as being filmed, it means exactly that: the questions are written, the sitting is not yet recorded, and nothing has been written in his voice to cover the gap.