For me it was always an outside sales person that can also do some estimating, so he/she knew what she was talking about and help out when needed.

Now in some cases that's not possible to have someone drive around all day, but around here it worked well. Setting up an geographical area and a set of general contractors to visit on a bi-weekly basis. Get in front of the GCs. You don't know how many jobs we used to walk out with that never made it to the streets (out to bid).

Most GCs have some type of bid room at their offices and you can see what jobs they were bidding and the plans are right there to look at.

There are plan centers, but to me they never worked that well for me. I know a couple of guys that do pretty well just using Bluebook's bid services. I'm not sure on cost, etc.