f I were to ask ten contractors how they calculate and apply overhead (indirect expense) to their estimates or time-and-material work, I would get ten different answers. If I were to press further as to how they arrived at their numbers, most of their methods would turn out to be arbitrary or have some element of guessing. For nearly 40 years, I have been working with contracting businesses to help them improve their cost-accounting systems, and most of those I have worked with had no scientific method as to how to calculate and allocate company overhead. This is not to
