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Billing Rates
Posted by sergeant-schultz on February 28, 2023 at 1:04 pmWhat hourly rates do you folks use for:
1) 1 person field crew
2) LS
3) Computations & drafting (CAD)
and if you estimate & bill jobs lump-sum, do you end up making the above rates?
Thanks! SS
eapls2708 replied 1 year, 1 month ago 23 Members · 40 Replies- 40 Replies
All I can say about us is that we target at least a 3.5 multiplier of wages for hourly rates. Lump sum varies greatly depending on the type of job with a clear goal of being substantially above the 3.5 multiplier. Lump Sum is where you can really make $.
I use Lump-Sum on everything.
extra work is negotiated case by case, based on actual cost, and I include my desired Profit.Lump sum for almost everything, otherwise $200 an hour. I usually beat that rate on lump sum.
Very dangerous topic, folks.
If your clients aren’t complaining, you’re not charging enough.
~Dan Beardslee
I hope everyone has a great day; I know I will!Very dangerous topic, folks.
Not really. There’s no law against discussing your billing rates. What somebody else does with that information is up to them. The laws against price fixing are all about collusion. You know, agreeing to charge the same amounts to eliminate competitive pricing.
Suuuuuuure.
You can find most firms rates in the meeting minutes of almost any municipality. It can take some digging, but there is a ton of info out there. It’s all publicly available in situations like that. Not a dangerous topic at all IMO.
You can find most firms rates in the meeting minutes of almost any municipality.
Very True. Nevertheless, most savvy business people have a billing rate list for public consumption, and another, private, one for calculating fixed fee proposals.
Taboo topic.
PLS hourly rate…
The subject would be taboo if the people discussing it had a significant market share. That’s obviously not the case here.
Union rates in downtown L.A. versus finding boundaries on residential tracts worth less than $10,000 in BugTussle.
Meaningless numbers. Why incite those looking to call us names in the first place?
Meaningless numbers.
Yeah. With the number of posts contrasting the difference in fees over the years, from a national (or more importantly international, as Surveyor Connect is) board, how much value can be placed on numbers posted.
Won’t be helpful to the OP, but as a solo person now, I don’t differentiate between the various functions of research, field, drafting, etc. It is all the same to me.
Yeah, no, I don’t answer those types of questions.
Other professions train their people how to run a business. Surveyors hold everything close to the vest. Hence, all the complaints about not charging properly to make a profit and a professional salary.
Hence, problem getting people into the profession.
The economics of surveying needs to be talked about more than anything else. But no one will do it.
Something one guy said recently at a seminar is if you’re not making enough to pay for health insurance for your family and your employees families, then you should not consider yourself in business.
I have no problem answering questions as posed in the OP. But it doesn’t mean anything.
The question is how to be successful, not any particular number. But if you teach a boilerplate way to be successful, then fees will naturally be more similar than they are and have been.
Other professions train their people how to run a business. Surveyors hold everything close to the vest. Hence, all the complaints about not charging properly to make a profit and a professional salary.
I think the challenge is how to decouple the value of a survey from the number of hours it will take to complete it. Hours per task is a concrete, easily quantified value, but they rarely reflect the actual value of the deliverables that we produce.
It might take 10 hours of fieldwork + 8 hours of office work + 3 hours administrative work to produce a basic boundary survey for a residential homeowner. That survey might very well be worth only the time we put into it.
But the same amount of time might be spent performing an intensive topographic survey on an expensive parcel of land for a lucrative civil design project.
We tend to price both jobs as if they were the same. They’re not.
And the value of data already collected is not reduced just because we don’t have to survey it all over again. Other data-driven industries don’t give a discount on data just because they already have it. We shouldn’t either.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil PostmanI don’t believe this suit was ever decided in court. The AG couldn’t prove anything.
There was no collusion or price fixing involved, instead that group had informal meetings to bitch about low ballers and what could done about them. Suggesting “standard prices” is what got them in hot water.
From the Orlando Sentinel
The Florida Attorney General’s Office Wednesday sued a dozen land surveyors in Brevard County, accusing them of a price-fixing conspiracy that caused lenders and property owners to pay excessive fees for land surveys.
The suit, filed in federal court in Orlando, seeks more than $10 million in civil penalties from 10 surveying companies and two individual surveyors.
It alleges that the surveyors launched their scheme in November 1991, established minimum fee schedules and “took steps to police and enforce adherence to their agreement.”
In some cases, they filed disciplinary complaints with the state Department of Professional Regulation against surveyors who did not comply, the suit alleges.
“As a result of this unlawful conduct, prices paid by purchasers of land or boundary surveys from defendants . . . were in excess of prices that would have prevailed in a competitive market,” the suit said.
The suit is the first of its type in Florida’s history to target price fixing among land surveyors, said Jerome Hoffman, chief lawyer for the attorney general’s antitrust section.
“This is true for any industry when times get tough economically. More than likely you’ll find cases of price fixing.”
The defendants include: Brevard Surveying Inc. of Palm Bay; Campbell Surveying and Mapping of Brevard Inc. in Merritt Island; Gordon & Deithorn Land Surveyors Inc. in Satellite Beach; Herrera, Williams & Powell Inc. of Melbourne; and Holley & Associates in Titusville.
Other defendants were Island Surveying and Mapping Co. in Merritt Island; Michael J. Kane in Melbourne; William B. Kissinger of Melbourne; William A. Lane Inc. of West Melbourne; William Mott Land Surveying Inc. of Satellite Beach; R.M. Packard & Associates Inc. of Rockledge; and Rothery Surveying Inc. of Melbourne.
Most surveyors listed in the suit could not be reached for comment.
One company, however, denied involvement with the alleged price-fixing activity.
Nora Gordon, office manager of Gordon & Associates in Satellite Beach, said the state’s accusations were directed at a former member of the firm, David Deithorn.
Although the suit lists Gordon & Deithorn Land Surveyors Inc. as a defendant, David Deithorn has now started his own firm in Satellite Beach, Gordon said.
She provided the Sentinel with a letter in which a state financial investigator implies that Deithorn is being investigated individually, not “as a corporate officer of Gordon & Deithorn Land Surveyors Inc.”
A staff member for David Deithorn & Associates said Wednesday afternoon that the surveyor was working in the field and could not be reached for comment.
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