Can you put out a crew for less than $200?

Sound like beer money to me.

Way way too cheap.

$200 an HOUR?

Sometimes, it depends on the crew!

Loyal

Some buildings are willing to go cheaper on the first two, and will allow you to charge more for the final survey since they pass that cost off to the home building. However sometimes the buyer will get their own surveyor, and you may lose out its a risk we dont take.

$100 does seem cheap, maybe if you can do 3 of those right next to each other. She may be telling you cheaper prices than what she is paying to get you to go cheaper.

I am with you. I know some companies that will do a package deal for the plot plan, staking the building, pinning the footers, foundation survey and final survey for around $500. It may work in some business models but not in ours.

"Can you put out a crew for less than $200?"

Sure. I can (and sadly, have) put out a crew for free. Like everybody else, I'm sure that's something I try to avoid. With overhead and clerical cost involved I definitely would be losing money at that amount. I try to run at a 4 hour minimum, which at current billing rates is around $600. Those 4 hours "cost" me around $350.

I do have at least one contract that puts a crew on the ground for $355 (for a specific type of job). But the volume of these types of job keeps us from performing only 1 at a time. We generally get 4 to 5 a day completed. Running around at $200 bucks a pop might generate a cash flow, but in the long run it will turn into a ' starvation death march '. There's just no money in there for a variety of expenses such as vehicle or equipment replacement, etc.

$200 doesn't pay for the crew to show up............

Sure, but it's me that's the crew. But it's pretty rare to bill anything less than $200. As mentioned above, it might be part of a package contract, or maybe an owner wants me to put a few stakes down the property line of a recent survey.

I EVEN once did something for FREE, for a very nice lady. But I made her promise not to tell anyone!!! I have a reputation to keep, ya know!

We used to do some pretty cheap foundations, but we required being able to do more than one at a time.

Kind of 1 for $300, 2 for $200 each, 3+ for $150 each. (Those aren't real numbers, I can't remember what they were.)

And, we probably made more money on the 3+, since mobilization takes a lot on a small job.

We all can tell a story about something (a house) that was staked on the wrong lot or incorrectly such that it cannot meet zoning code. Doesn't happen often but it does. Politely let your client know that you are insured, take the time to review all of the building plans and the covenants and conditions shown on the plat and her title report and will advise her if you find any issues before concrete is poured. This may be where you supply her with references from her competition. If she wants to run the risk of something going sideways when you could have prevented it, that is her problem. Frankly, I wouldn't want to work for her anyway.

Respectfully

I don't give out hourly rates but I base all my proposals on $180 across the board, and moving to $200 in Jan.

foggyidea, post: 343990, member: 155 wrote: moving to $200 in Jan.

Good for you.

Costs vary so much by locality that responses to this question aren't very useful unless you figure out a way to scale the crew rate to match the local cost environment.

Sure, $200 gets you a hour long pre-start meeting. +Travel time of course.

No way. I recently did a foundation location that they called for and after the fact they added another wall on the back that was going to be a porch with some stairs coming down or something. They wanted me to add it to the survey and I said any time I have to go back out for anything at all it is a minimum of $400. They had no problem with that.

I would maybe consider doing some things for less in your situation if there were definitely going to be multiple tasks called for per day. That being said, I can't see doing anything for $200.

Do you have to include a new plan? Like a foundation location plan? That is what we call them which basically shows the boundary, setbacks, the new foundation, ties to property lines and elevation of the top of concrete. It is a pretty basic plan, but any time a plan is generated there has to be some drafting, printing, review time associated with that. So even if you have the boundary stuff all set from the stakeout there still has to be some cost in the office of maybe $100 minimum.

I think Jim is right. The question shouldn't be in $$$ the question should be how many hours do you charge to the client. I typically won't leave the office for less than three hours of crew time, more the farther from the office I am. That covers the cost of the truck and equipment, but not much else. I won't do a lot of construction staking so that might not fly for you. When I was staking condo's years back I did give a better rate if we could stay on site staking all day. We would do I for I think $300, two for $500 and so on I believe. The builder wanted a supermarket list of what it was going to cost per unit.

Threads of this kind remind me of why I almost never work with builders.

I get the argument that the dollar amount should not matter, but there has to be a minimum to some extent. I mean how can someone conduct fieldwork and put out a plan for less than $200? I guess you can do whatever you want or maybe you load the other parts of the project to intentionally lose money on that phase. I just can't understand why it's necessary.

There are getting to be fewer surveyors around here and just as much work, so pricing has gone up some. There are still some lowballers keeping things down in certain areas especially far south jersey where prices seem to remain quite low.

At the start of my survey career in the early '90s I worked for a company that did mainly mortgage certificates, foundation certificates, and single family residential layouts. Field crew was expected to do 5-7 of these each day, and a single CAD drafter supported 2 crews. Yes, we actually got out of the truck and tied pins. But, of course, we didn't linger over them long. Maps were 8"x 11" sketches on a standard border produced in under an hour, field to finished and out the door. And we worked only within 20 miles of so of the office, mostly. At the time these jobs went for $300 - $350 per. But I was making only a few dollars an hour less than what you are proposing to pay a party chief now.

If you could do 5 jobs a day at $200 per for 250 days a year that's $250,000 revenue on labor costs of, perhaps, about half that. It could work . In theory. Probably not in practice. The key would be $100% utilization of your staff, an $18/hr party chief that could handle the load, and a $15/hr drafter.

No thanks. If you decide to follow that business model you won't find me among your competition. It's a race to the bottom.