Emergency dispatch workspace
Emergency contracting margin protection
Price the job, check the cash you need up front, and review whether your crew is ready to dispatch.
1. Price the bid
Use your contract quote for revenue, a supplier quote for diesel, and your equipment quote or cost records for standby. Estimate gallons and delay costs from your job plan. Enter each cost once.
Results
See the worked bid and all 27 scenarios
Illustrative inputs from the form above. Base cost $16,100.00, profit $3,900.00, and margin 19.5%.
| Diesel price per gallon | Standby hours | Delay days | Cost | Profit | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $3.25 | 10 | 1 | $15,800.00 | $4,200.00 | 21% |
| $3.25 | 10 | 1 | $15,800.00 | $4,200.00 | 21% |
| $3.25 | 10 | 3 | $18,800.00 | $1,200.00 | 6% |
| $3.25 | 10 | 1 | $15,800.00 | $4,200.00 | 21% |
| $3.25 | 10 | 1 | $15,800.00 | $4,200.00 | 21% |
| $3.25 | 10 | 3 | $18,800.00 | $1,200.00 | 6% |
| $3.25 | 30 | 1 | $17,800.00 | $2,200.00 | 11% |
| $3.25 | 30 | 1 | $17,800.00 | $2,200.00 | 11% |
| $3.25 | 30 | 3 | $20,800.00 | -$800.00 | -4% |
| $4.00 | 10 | 1 | $16,100.00 | $3,900.00 | 19.5% |
| $4.00 | 10 | 1 | $16,100.00 | $3,900.00 | 19.5% |
| $4.00 | 10 | 3 | $19,100.00 | $900.00 | 4.5% |
| $4.00 | 10 | 1 | $16,100.00 | $3,900.00 | 19.5% |
| $4.00 | 10 | 1 | $16,100.00 | $3,900.00 | 19.5% |
| $4.00 | 10 | 3 | $19,100.00 | $900.00 | 4.5% |
| $4.00 | 30 | 1 | $18,100.00 | $1,900.00 | 9.5% |
| $4.00 | 30 | 1 | $18,100.00 | $1,900.00 | 9.5% |
| $4.00 | 30 | 3 | $21,100.00 | -$1,100.00 | -5.5% |
| $4.75 | 10 | 1 | $16,400.00 | $3,600.00 | 18% |
| $4.75 | 10 | 1 | $16,400.00 | $3,600.00 | 18% |
| $4.75 | 10 | 3 | $19,400.00 | $600.00 | 3% |
| $4.75 | 10 | 1 | $16,400.00 | $3,600.00 | 18% |
| $4.75 | 10 | 1 | $16,400.00 | $3,600.00 | 18% |
| $4.75 | 10 | 3 | $19,400.00 | $600.00 | 3% |
| $4.75 | 30 | 1 | $18,400.00 | $1,600.00 | 8% |
| $4.75 | 30 | 1 | $18,400.00 | $1,600.00 | 8% |
| $4.75 | 30 | 3 | $21,400.00 | -$1,400.00 | -7% |
2. Check cash before payment
Use supplier due dates, payroll dates, and the customer payment schedule. Add a cash event for each date you expect to pay costs or receive money. Leave an amount at zero when it does not apply. Costs are applied before receipts on the same day.
3. Review dispatch readiness
Uses the bid, stress ranges and cash schedule above. Confirm each item from current operating information. This review does not authorize dispatch.
How this calculation works
Job cost equals other costs plus fuel, standby and delay costs. Margin is profit divided by contract revenue. Include each cost once. Break-even values hold other inputs fixed. A negative threshold means the other entered costs already exceed revenue.
Optional checks and watches
Look up weather, outages, roads and FEMA records
Look up official source records
Source records are for review. Bid inputs stay as entered.
Check or submit a community road closure report. Community observations are unverified.
Estimate productive hours from past jobs
Calibrate a productive-hours range
Use comparable jobs and forecasts made before work began. Keep later validation jobs separate from calibration. The target assumes future jobs behave like the calibration jobs. No verified coverage is claimed without independent validation.
Set up a river gauge or background watch
Watch a river gauge while this page is open
Checks about every five minutes while this page is visible. Find a gauge on the NOAA water map and use the ID and stage unit shown there. Set a review threshold from your job plan or agency guidance. The watch flags review and leaves the bid and dispatch decision to you.
Check mobilization conditions
Confirm access for each route leg with the official state road sources. Enter confirmed costs in the bid. Reported conditions do not establish safe access.
Official road information for all 50 states
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
See the Project Completion Window Planner for crew, equipment and weather scenarios.
Reference lookup output template
Column layout only. Results appear after a lookup and depend on source availability.
| Source | Location or route | Publication or retrieval time | Reported status |
|---|
Lookup sources · OpenFEMA · NOAA river gauges · National Weather Service alerts · FHWA state road information · USDOT work-zone feed registry · California power outage incidents · Maryland county power outages · Maryland ZIP power outages
Official weather datasets
BusCalc requests these external datasets when you run a supported lookup. The worked examples use illustrative inputs.
- NOAA NWPS river gauge stage and flow. National Water Prediction Service river gauge observations and forecast series. Availability, valid times and stage or flow units depend on the gauge.
- USGS real-time flood-impact reference points. U.S. Geological Survey reference-point thresholds and matching dated gauge measurements used for point-specific flood checks. Confirm road access with the responsible road agency.
- NWS active weather alerts. National Weather Service watches, warnings and advisories with issuance, effective and expiration times, severity and affected areas.
- California power outage incidents and county counts. Reports from participating California utilities. County counts do not have a confirmed observation time and do not establish power at a jobsite.
- Maryland county outage reports. County outage counts and reported customer totals for participating Maryland utilities. The timestamp describes a dataset record update. Confirm power at the jobsite separately.
- Maryland ZIP outage reports. Outage counts by ZIP Code for participating Maryland utilities. The timestamp describes a dataset record update.