Wyoming Construction Estimating Services

Wyoming doesn’t hand you one rulebook. It hands you a map.

There’s no statewide building code for private construction here. Cities and counties adopt their own, and some unincorporated country has never adopted one at all. Cheyenne runs the 2021 I-codes — building, residential, fire, plumbing, mechanical, fuel gas — with the 2021 energy code and the 2020 NEC. The Town of Jackson is on the same 2021 family and the 2020 NEC. Drive out past the town line into a county with no adopted code and there is no inspector’s checklist waiting for you. The job gets built to the drawings and to the engineer, and the estimate has to say so instead of assuming a plan reviewer will catch what the set left out.

Then there’s the weather, and in Wyoming it is not a rounding error.

Jackson publishes its design criteria in public: a ground snow load of 93 pounds per square foot, a design wind speed of 115 mph, Seismic Design Category D, and a frost depth of 34 inches. Ninety-three psf rewrites the roof structure, the framing members, the connections and the crane plan. Thirty-four inches rewrites every footing on the site. If you price a Teton County house off a set of national assemblies, you’re going to be short on steel and short on concrete before anybody breaks ground.

And then tax — which in Wyoming is simpler than most states, which is exactly why it gets missed. The state rate is 4% and a county can add up to 2% on top. The contractor is the consumer of the materials: you pay the tax when you buy them, not when you bill the owner. It never appears as a line on the invoice, so if it isn’t inside your material pricing, nobody is reimbursing you for it later. Check the rate for the county the job sits in, not the county your office sits in.

We see all four of these every year.

1. Which code the job is actually under. “Wyoming code” isn’t a thing you can look up. The answer is the ordinance of the town or county the site sits in, and the answer changes when you cross a line. Cheyenne and Jackson are both on 2021 I-codes today; the unincorporated parcel between two towns may be on nothing. That decides plan review, inspections, egress, envelope and fire protection — and every one of those is money. Establish the AHJ before you price the first division, not after.

2. Snow, wind, frost and seismic — by jurisdiction, not by state. The Jackson numbers above are Jackson’s numbers. The Basin, the Powder River Basin and the I-80 corridor each have their own. Pull the design-criteria sheet for the actual town. A roof designed for a plains snow load and a roof designed for 93 psf are not the same roof, and the estimate shouldn’t pretend they are.

3. The licence, town by town. Wyoming has no statewide general contractor licence. Cities and towns issue their own, so a multi-town program used to mean a separate exam and a separate fee in every one. Senate File 114 — signed 14 March 2024, effective 1 July 2024 — now makes Wyoming municipalities recognise contractor licences another Wyoming municipality issued off an ICC exam. That’s real relief on a rural program, but registration and fees still belong in General Conditions for each jurisdiction you’re working in.

4. Prevailing wage is a federal question here, not a state one. Wyoming repealed its 1967 Prevailing Wage Act and never replaced it, so state- and locally funded work carries no state wage floor. Federal or federally assisted work of $2,000 or more still carries Davis-Bacon. In a state with this much federal-adjacent work, that single question can move the labor number in either direction — and the fastest way to lose a public job is to carry the wrong answer.

We’d rather show you than tell you. Sixteen real estimates are on this page, four in each of the four categories we work in — $53.5M of construction value across 123 pages of takeoff and pricing. Eight are Wyoming jobs. Eight are in the states we work next door in, labelled with their city and state so you always know which is which. Open them. Read the line items.

Commercial Buildings — ground-up hospitality, retail, restaurant and institutional.

• Hilton Hampton Inn, Cody – $10.1M (82414)
• Meridien Office Shell, Meridian ID – $2.4M (83642)
• The Preserve at Greenway Park, Casper – $724K (82609)
• Wheatland Wendy’s, Wheatland – $648K (82201)

Multi Family and Apartments — apartments, condos and multi-unit housing.

• Ambience Apartments – BLDG 1, Denver CO – $10.1M (80220)
• Steelwood Station Apartments, Boise ID – $6.1M (83713)
• 36th Street Apts, Garden City ID – $5.4M (83714)
• Jocelyn Court Townhomes, Provo UT – $4.7M (84605)

Residential — custom homes, mountain houses and whole-house remodels.

• 1020 S Starwood Drive Residence, Aspen CO – $7.5M (81611)
• Teton Pines Lot 11, Wilson – $1.8M (83014)
• Residence AD65718 (Per Plan), Laramie – $657K (82072)
• Riverview home Project, Manti UT – $515K (84642)

Tenant Buildouts — interior fit-outs and remodels in existing buildings.

• Cheyenne Medical Clinic – $1.9M (82001)
• Cheyenne Safeway – $479K (82007)
• Plutos Smoke Shop, Casper – $432K (82609)
• 3rd Floor Deans Suite Renovation, Boulder CO – $35K (80305)

Four building types, from a $35K suite renovation to a $10.1M hotel. That range is the point. Most shops price one lane and call it a service.

Look at the two Cheyenne jobs. The medical clinic is $1.9M over ten pages, because a clinic fit-out is mechanical, plumbing and electrical fighting over the same ceiling, and every one of those is its own takeoff. The Safeway is $479K over four, and it’s a different animal entirely — demolition, then finishes, doors and specialties in a store that has to reopen.

Same contrast up north. Hilton Hampton Inn in Cody is eleven pages and carries every division from sitework to conveying systems. Teton Pines Lot 11 in Wilson is seven pages for a house — and in that county, the snow and frost numbers above are doing a lot of the work in the structural and concrete lines.

We estimate statewide, and we estimate the region around it. Here’s where the volume is.

Cheyenne and the southeast. Cheyenne, Laramie, Wheatland, Torrington and the I-25 corridor. Two of the estimates above are Cheyenne jobs and one is Wheatland.

Casper and central Wyoming. Casper, Douglas, Riverton and Lander. Two of the sixteen are Casper jobs. Energy work drives the sub market here, and sub availability moves with it.

Jackson and Teton County. Jackson, Wilson, Teton Village and Alta. The toughest design criteria in the state and the longest hauls for material. Teton Pines Lot 11 is on this page.

Cody, Powell and the Big Horn Basin. Cody, Powell, Worland and Thermopolis. The Hampton Inn on this page is a Cody job. Tourism and hospitality work, with the same haul-distance problem.

Gillette, Sheridan and the Powder River Basin. Gillette, Sheridan, Buffalo and Newcastle. Industrial and energy-adjacent commercial, plus the housing that follows it.

Rock Springs, Green River and Evanston. The I-80 west corridor. Long distances, thin sub markets, and a lot of work that gets bid from out of state.

We also price across the line in Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota — eight of the sixteen estimates above are exactly that.

General contractors bidding hard-bid and negotiated work. Subs who need a takeoff that survives a scope review. Developers who want a real number before they commit capital. Architects who’d rather price a design now than explain a surprise on bid day.

Wyoming is a small market with big distances, and most of the shops working in it are running lean. If you’re a GC turning down invitations because you can’t get numbers out fast enough, you’re going to keep leaving work on the table until somebody else does the takeoff for you. That’s what our Wyoming construction estimating services are built to fix. You send the plans. We send back a priced estimate with the quantities shown, in a format you can hand straight to a client or an owner.

We’re not a lead service and we’re not a software subscription. A person does the takeoff. Another person checks it. You can call and ask why a number is what it is, and get an answer.

What you’re hiring is a cost estimator who has already priced work under your town’s code edition, on your snow load, at your county’s tax rate — not a national average with the word Wyoming written on top.

Send us your plans. We’ll tell you what it costs.