Builders – rates?

Had some work done recently on a day rate + materials basis, which has worked pretty well previously with my builder. This time though the cost has come in nearly twice what I’d expected, so was hoping for a sense check before I query it with him. If anyone has the time, I’d be grateful for your thoughts on rates (Sheffield, if it matters).

2t digger hire, 2 days. £250?

Digger driver and labourer (digging) £200 + £120

Bricklayer and two labourers (mixing, carrying blocks) £250 + £120 + £120

Mini mix concrete, 2 cubic meters, poured direct (i.e. no carrying/pump) £350

Cheers!

Can’t help with your plant or concrete elements but the labour rates are about right IMO.

Those rates all seems about right to me.

2t digger hire for two days seems a bit high though but if it included delivery / collection and fuel it may not be too far off the mark!

Inc or + VAT
That’s about right for a digger with delivery / collection

seems fine. Are you happy with the work?

Only thing stands out there as expensive is concrete.
Recently had 2 cube of C40 for £180 Inc vat

Labour rates look OK; C40 looks expensive – even more so if your price is vat exc; call plant hire company for digger price.

Did you ask for prices upfront or is this after the event?

I’m shocked you think that is twice as expensive as it should be!

Labour rates look bang on, how much do you think a tradesmen should earn per day then? £125?

And a labourer for £60 wouldn’t be of any use to anyone!

Digger would be hire cost, plus fuel, plus delivery, plus Insurance and maybe cleaning costs

Brexit means Brexit!

Look fine to me.

Agree with above, surprised you think it should be half as much. 2 years back our builder was 200 a day, mini digger and operator 250 a day. Agree concrete looks a bit high, but generally fair. Obvs material costs are crazy high versus even 2 years ago.

I’m guessing the OP thinks that’s what it should be and he’s been charged nearly double.

I do hope he asked his new builder what his day rates where rather than presuming they were the same as his old builder.

Rates sound reasonable to me

I can’t see how you can get 2 cube of c40 for £180

700kg of cement at £7.50/25kg alone then you have all the agg/ lorry/driver

All the costs seem very average to me

Concrete seems in line for a small batch round here.

I can’t see how you can get 2 cube of c40 for £180

I don’t normally use the stuff so have no idea what it costs in general.
All I know is I dug a hole that was approx 2m cube , and asked a mate to sort out the concrete.( he does it for a living )
Volumetric turned up , dumped it in the hole .
My mate gave me an invoice for £150+ VAT
Did I get a bargain ?😎

£120 a day is £15 per hour for 8 hours. Seems a good price for labourers who turn up and get on with the job. Pay any less and you’ll get no shows or all day on the phone to somewhere else and steal your tools people rather than workers.
Remember that as they’re self employed they are (in theory) paying employers and employee NI from that and get no paid holiday or employer pension. Brings the rate down to only a £ or two above minimum wage.
Brickies costing double that seems fair too.

At risk of repeating what’s been said above, where TF were you expecting to get labourers to work at £7.50 an hour for two day job?

Fwiw I am going building another extension and dreading the cost this time round.

Built 6mx3m from the ground up took out a wall and put steels in for 35k all in. 4 years pre/mid covid- before the materials shortage hit.

Looking like double that to go over an existing (and correctly built to take it) garage……for 7m x 2.8m

I was paying £250 pd for bricklayers 12 months ago.

Day rate depends on location.

Chill guys. These are the rates I would expect to pay; the bill has come in substantially higher. The concrete is based on some places charging for delivery for less than full loads, but is just a guess.

So, are you (now) saying that the rates/prices you stated at the top of the thread are what you would expect to pay but the builder is about double that?

If so, that certainly wasn’t the message you conveyed?

That’s cheap, surely……

Day rates weren’t that far off those prices when I left the UK in 2008.

As a chippy, day rate for site work was ~£260. Would have expected to earn £300+ if on piece rate.

Sure groundworkers weren’t on the same money, but would have expected things to have moved more than they have.

Pisses me off people complaining about the cost of other people’s time…..

Stump up.

OP is in Sheffield so lower rates than Essex.

The rate quoted are low.
my bricklayers are £285.00 p/day to me as a main contractor, and that’s very reasonable.
plant hire costs have jumped recently due to insurance and fuel costs, no more red diesel on site etc. My insurance is £5000.00 per year.
Concrete to me is £130 pm3.
Labourer who is any good £150.00 pd.

Bumping this to see if anyone has a steer for day rates for carpenters in the south east?

Having a large amount of work done and there was more than expected needed on the roof. They didn’t quote us before starting the work and have now come back with 18 (3×6) carpenter days and 5 labourer days at.. £7k+ vat.

Seems steep to me.. if you say a labourer is 150/day +vat then the carpenters are being charged at over £420/day (Inc vat)

I pay around £250 + delivery/collection for a week’s hire of a 3 ton digger, but on the other hand the minimum hire is 1 week.

I can’t get anywhere close to £200-250/day for labour. A brickie’s mate costs around £300/day and trades start at £50/hr and go up from there: I was quoted £11k to build a brick wall 15m long and 1.2m high… Thing is there are plenty of multi-millionaire golf aficionados with second, third and fourth homes round here that will pay those rates if I don’t, which is why a) I’m doing everything myself, and b) it’s taking forever to build.

NE Fife

then the carpenters are being charged at over £420/day (Inc vat)

We didn’t go ahead with a new bathroom last year as the daily rates were £400+ as far as I could tell from quote. This was a small bathroom with modest fittings + plain tiles or panels ending up over £11k even after I did the strip out and skip or £12.5k if they stripped out + skip.

Dunblane.

a labourer is 150/day +vat then the carpenters are being charged at over £420/day (Inc vat)

Thats about right. The Labourer will be on maybe £180, so with VAT, thats £216, the chippy rate will be around £300 a day + vat.
Current agency site work is around £16-20 for Labourers – but sites are usually 10 hours/day so they can earn up to £200/day. £23-30 for chippys, so up to £300/day.
Self employed I’d expect a bit more than agency wages, where it is just turn up with a kit bag, and get told what to do, then get paid the following week. Insurance/vehicle/VAT forms/arranging Staff,quotes, deliveries,customer expectations, waiting to get paid etc are all an extra cost to Companies, so the Customer pays that.

customer expectations

What is this cost then? Sounds nebulous, juicy and not in the original estimate. The best kind of cost.

They didn’t quote us before

is this directly from the guys doing the work or a company?  A company will add a profit.margin onto what they pay the workers.

I’ve got some good guys here at the.moment and I’m paying £200 and £90 per day!

customer expectations…
What is this cost then

It isnt a cost, but something you have to deal with when self-employed. One example, They expect their new bedroom to look like a £1m house when you are done, but all you are there for is to build and fit an Ikea wardrobe. They then say, I thought it was going to be bigger, why cant it fit closer to that wall (because your roof slopes down!) etc. Its an hassle that self employed people, who work for the general public, have to put up with, customer relations is an added cost. Working on a site is a lot lot stress, with only a small reduction in wages, so if offered site work, many tradesmen will take it rather than having to deal with the general public.

I know this bit’s out of date now, as the original question about the concrete was asked back in Feb/Mar, but nonetheless:-

A minimix rate of about £350 for 2m3 of C32/40 or C40/50 sounds about right to me, looking at some of our quotes for building work in S Yorks, similar in the W Mids. Materials alone will be around £200 of that, and quite easily another £100 for the haulage, depending how far you are from the plant. That haulage cost includes an amount to cover the ‘uncarried’ space in the truck with a capacity of probably 4m3 – the driver will get paid as if he were carrying a full load even if he’s not actually full up.
It could well work out cheaper to have a volumetric truck come and batch on site for you, as per @revs1972 up above, but I don’t know what quality schemes and manufacturing controls the volumetric boys work within, if at all.

a labourer is 150/day +vat

Crikey. I’m currently working for just under £150 day and I’m a cabinetmaker.

Always working like a monkey, me :-/