Rate Increase

We keep our rates matched with value on an ongoing basis. Long term contracts are adjusted at milestones rather than dates. The one exception is some government contracts. Those are governed by agency or entity policy.

6+ % depending on the position.

In general I don't raise my rates every year, more like every two or three, mostly because most (90%?) of my work is either lump-sum or at rates fixed by the term of a multi-year contract.?ÿ The only kind of work that I regularly perform on a per-hour basis is litigation support, and that rate is already pretty high.

Raising rates based on the number of RFPs received in the last 6 weeks.

We're incredibly busy, as is almost every other surveyor in the area.?ÿ We're raising rates 10% across the board.?ÿ If I thought I could have talked the owners into raising rates by 25%, I would have tried.?ÿ I had previously talked them into raising our expert witness rates from 1.33% of normal rates to 2x normal rates.?ÿ Again, if I didn't think it would've been too much of a culture shock for them, I would have suggested 2.5x normal rates.

My predecessors (one quit just before he would've been fired, and the other died just 2 weeks before I started work here) were setting budgets as if they were competing in lean times for too few jobs, and were hoping that everything would always go exactly as planned on all projects.?ÿ I'm setting budgets on new projects with plenty time to ensure we can be thorough and comfortably handle the unexpected, which inevitably occurs on about 75% of projects.?ÿ So I suppose that's another form of raising our rates.

I think most rates are going up by 10% or 15%. Anything in Noble County is 25% to 30% on top of that. Noble County is difficult to work with.

Any estimates I put out are about 40 percent higher than in the past and we are still overloaded.?ÿ Sticker shock occurs, of course, but those who are serious about getting something done learn that being able to get it done now is more important than the cost.

At the firm I worked at, about 5 years ago we stopped basically discounting survey services, gradually moving to zero writing off of time spent on a project from the initial call, writing the proposal all the way through to the final billing. In 2010 or so we were willing to write off quite a bit of time to get the work, by 2018 things were far different.

Every single hour billed. Then rates were raised. I would guess that the actual cost for a small residential lot survey doubled by 2021 (from 2010).

For large projects it was much smaller of a percentage increase, since the initial research, etc was a small part of the cost.

I explain to my wife that there was this huge "pent up" inflation. And we are seeing that in every area of our economy. Prices are jumping by large percentages, but some of them are long past due. It is about relative value, and we will see where it falls out. Hopefully, surveying falls out higher than it was a decade ago.