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Don't see how you can price things like this ................... labour costs will vary considerably depending on the site you're doing the work at....., cost of materiasl and getting them will vary. I'm no expert on these things but I'd have thought you'd have to price each job on seeing it rather than some sort of formula.
Go search the Forum - there are 10's of Threads with useful information on pricing / costing, but trying to compare prices is a dangerous method as we all have different cost bases, in different areas, different experience, different productivity and different levels of trade pricing/discounts.
Strongly suggest you work out your own internal hourly charging rates first based on the spreadsheet downloaded from the forum's footer.
Unit pricing can and will screw you.....unless you can deliver the same service in the same way using the same goods.
If you're off a fraction of a point, times a few hundred 'units' you could end up paying to do their work.....
Agree with Graham and Gary, you really need to break each part of the job into it's sections and price per job, as each job is different - even down to access.
Taking 'Indian Sandstone' I would look a four distinct stages: Dig out, muck away and prepare. Lay base. Lay and point slabs. Clear site and leave tidy. You can then break these sections down again to work out your material costs.
Thanks for the feedback lads and think I will change how I price then. Practical work I'm great, paperwork and all not so great but I will learn yet. Thanks again
It's a bit of a 'chicken and egg' scenario, Steven. You need to have experience to be able to price correctly and experience comes with being able to price correctly!
I know this will sound so basic, but many people forget the basics of good estimating in their excitement of securing the job. 'Pricing on the back of a fag packet' is definitley not the way to go - give yourself time. Sit down with a blank sheet of paper, a clear head and 'build' the job (as I said above) in stages, leaving space under each phase to add as you go along. You will be surprised how soon the 'job' will build up with labour and materials.
You will make mistakes, but will soon learn from them. For that reason don't take on anything to big to start with, you could probably cope with a 15% hit on a £2.5K job, but on a £20K job - ouch!
For a bit of practice, measure up and price imaginary jobs in your own garden, to calculate materials required. As a very rough guide landscaping projects tend to run out at a 50/50 labour/material split.
I would guess the customer ideally wants unbroken lines of daylight showing through the slat gaps with as few vertical battens breaking this look..... still, don't think there's be any other solution under than replacing the worst slats or changing the lights. How about narrow angle-irons at the back...... more strength than battens and don't need to be as wide? My neighbour had some brickwork done recently with similar downlights............ looked great till he switched the light on and then you could see every "blemish" where one brick was a fraction out.
Thanks again guys took the advice of breaking it all down into sections like you said and seems to be working well, only thing I hate is I sometimes feel it sounds too much but with breaking it all down it does add up and I'm landing about 50% of my quotes