Help pricing jobs

[1stbrickwork 1]

Hi there i am a fully qualified bricklayer who has just turned self employed as lack of work so now i am tryin to get jobs of my own and im just a little unsure how to price up so any imformation any one could give would be very much apreciated thanks.

[stuart45 1]

The first thing to remember is that a similar job on site can usually be done in half the time. On site everything is already on site, whereas even when you think you have got all the materials there is often something that you have to shoot off down the merchants for. There is also a lot more cleaning at the end of each day. Leaving the site really clean and tidy often impresses the customers more than the quality of workmanship.

[Rich 2]

Hi there

Pricing your work can be fairly easy, you can either do it several ways, depending on the job in hand...

Day rate, per job or per 1000 bricks laid for example...

If your building a garden wall and you know it 12m long, double skin, 10 courses high, you know its going to be around 1000 bricks, or if your quick, 2 days work, so you can either quote the job as x days work + materials, or if its a mega complex job that might take ages you could quote per 1000 bricks laid or a day rate (handy if you have a client that keeps changing their mind all the time)

Have you worked as a bricky before now for other people?

Leaving the site really clean and tidy often impresses the customers more than the quality of workmanship.

I wouldnt say that so much, the 2 go hand in hand, you dont want a good tradesman who builds things fantastically but then leaves you with a bomb-site to cleanup after he trashes the place, but its no use to anybody having shoddy workmanship, badly built walls etc but clean ones...

I recently had builders in to re-render our house and they would spend about an hour at the end of every day cleaning up, sweeping the neighbours drive down, removing all the dust sheets and tarp's from everything they covered, and they did a really good job on the rendering too, so I was very pleased as this is one of the first times I have ever happily paid a builder for doing a good job of something...

All the previous builders I have had the mis-fortune of dealing with, I have had to ask them to leave or re-negotiate their prices after they had totally screwed up a job, clean or not, crappy work cant be hidden...

Its just the professional thing to do, do a great job of what has been asked, and dont trash the customers property in the process of doing it.. Keep in mind that after your gone, the customer has to live with whatever mess is left behind.

[stuart45 1]

I am not suggesting that he should produce poor quality work and concentrate on clearing up, but the general public are often not aware of the difference between a high quality brick wall and one built to a just about acceptable standard. I would advise anyone to build to the highest standard but to be aware that you are working for customers who look for different things than the CoW on site would look for.

[Rich 2]

lol, the CoW ????

[1stbrickwork 1]

I understand my work and site cleanliness must both be to a high standard as it always is. I am just looking for a step by step guide to help me price jobs up.

[stuart45 1]

CoW is short for Clerk of the Works, who are quite rare on site nowadays but are responsible for the quality of workmanship of all trades on site. They generally kept standards quite high, although were not always popular with sub-contractors.