For hourly construction layout, is it customary to bill for travel time or do you treat that as overhead?
Yes, I bill full fee rate for travel time on hourly staking jobs.
yep.
We bill a daily setup fee to cover travel and materials. We also charge a 4 or 8 hour minimum site time.
Yup. Time is money.
Most definitely. Gas, insurance and taxes are a part of the deal..don't feel guilty.
Travel time plus millage is the standard around here. As a field guy the only time I have seen my hours not billed is when standing by on office screw ups or some other political gesture.
In my opinion for hourly construction it is a real good idea to get a daily report log with carbon copies, fill em out with a summary of tasks performed, difficulties, time on site and total hours billed. Give the original to the contractor when leaving site, pink to the office and canary stays with the field file. Cuts the BS and also makes a nice overall narrative for the job.
Travel time and mileage .
RADU
Bow Tie Surveyor, post: 339807, member: 6939 wrote: For hourly construction layout, is it customary to bill for travel time or do you treat that as overhead?
When I was in business in Wyoming, crew time started when they showed up at work and started loading up equipment and materials and left the office for the job site. Full crew rate for all travel to and from the job site, mileage and an hourly rate for when the vehicle was on the job. Everything I did was by an hourly fee and everything was charged out, EDM time, any materials used, and any other incidentals that might come up. Never did anything on a lump sum and never will. Too many unknowns to contend with.
Portal to portal
Hmmm...I think I have been doing this wrong.
I usually charge lump sum, but on those jobs that I charge hourly, I start the clock when I arrive and stop it when I leave the site. I was thinking of raising my hourly rate, but charging full hourly rate during travel time (for me, typically 1/2 hour each way) sounds better to me.
Hourly rate plus mileage, I haven't had very many complaints. It seems most of the time the complaint is whether the time you spend is billable at all (example - restaking), not how much you charge. I do most construction staking lump sum but put in additional services and restaking are hourly plus mileage.
It would be ideal to do all construction staking hourly, but I haven't been able to get the contractors to bite.
The last time I checked the Hour Wage Division of the Department of Labor requires you to pay your employees from the time they report to the agreed meeting place until they return. Normally that is the office. but is always while driving a company truck so if the PC takes the truck home at night and picks up the crew at a comuter lot then the PC gets paid from his house until he returns home and the crew gets paid from pickup to drop off. I got a suprise check from my employeer for that back in 1983. A former employee had dropped a dime on him to the DOL.
We bill from the time the truck pulls out until it pulls back in.
We charge for on site time, however there is a 3 hour minimum for any site visit. Too many calls to replace one stake, etc.
This was the other option I was considering (a 2 hour minimum field visit charge), but I've found that clients (well, homeowners anyway) seem to really hate minimum charges, so I'm thinking that just charging for travel time will seem more justifiable to them.
The minimum charge I'm thinking of is the typical 4 hour minimum charge for a backhoe for soil testing. If it only takes 1 or 2 hours for the soil test, I almost always hear some snide remark from the client about the 4 hour minimum. Maybe the excavating company would be better off charging full rate for their travel time also!
Layout work is billed portal to portal.
We actually make out better on lump sum work. We can hustle and bill for task. Anything out of contract is a 4 hour minimum. Too many calls for small restake stuff and it burns your day.
I have done the hourly rate thing for construction stake out and did not feel very incentivized by it , no reason to work fast or Efficiently and it just felt like being a salaried employee again . Kind of like I have sold an hour of my life which I can never get back again.
I bill on a per site visit rate , which covers travel time and travel cost , and then a per point staked .
I get to site , put in the points they want , as fast and efficiently as I am comfortable with , then move on to the next site .
It works for me.
Some jobs I will do on a lump sum basis , but the scope and extent of works is clearly defined in that lump sum , everything over and above that is an extra and an escalation clause is built into the lump sum based on a time schedule .
Working per hour is not for me
I can easily have 4-5 hours travel time for 1 hour field time, so yes. Maybe only a couple of days a year, but when it is required, it takes what it takes.
Paul in PA