Billing Question
Billing Question
(OP)
I am wondering how to bill a particular project.
I had a client call me up and ask me to help him out with some calculations for an error that was made by the GC in the field. My client is a sub to the GC and was just trying to help out the GC with a demanding EOR. I received the email and phone call, became familiar with the problem and the EOR's request, checked the revised condition built by the GC and ran some numbers. I prepared a detail set of sealed calculations to be sent to the EOR for review including all references.
Now comes the billing, what do I bill for the services? My client is well aware of my rate and said that I would be compensated for my time. I am just wondering if I should be billing for my time beginning with reading the email and becoming familiar with the project through sending with the sealed calculations or if I should bill for calculation preparation only? What do others do?
I had a client call me up and ask me to help him out with some calculations for an error that was made by the GC in the field. My client is a sub to the GC and was just trying to help out the GC with a demanding EOR. I received the email and phone call, became familiar with the problem and the EOR's request, checked the revised condition built by the GC and ran some numbers. I prepared a detail set of sealed calculations to be sent to the EOR for review including all references.
Now comes the billing, what do I bill for the services? My client is well aware of my rate and said that I would be compensated for my time. I am just wondering if I should be billing for my time beginning with reading the email and becoming familiar with the project through sending with the sealed calculations or if I should bill for calculation preparation only? What do others do?





RE: Billing Question
RE: Billing Question
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Billing Question
Bill at your hourly rate for the time expended and itemize it. To be the devil's advocate here, all this should have been spelled out in writing BEFORE you started, but that's water over the dam now. If he refuses to pay though, do pull your stamp.
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
http://mmcengineering.tripod.com
RE: Billing Question
RE: Billing Question
RE: Billing Question
So I would not see reading the emails as chargeable, becoming familiar with a project is a very grey area and for me that depend on the value of the project, clearly spending ten hours to become familiar with a project that has two hours that can be billed would be somewhat silly, but to lose ten hours on a project that has 100 billable hours would get lost in our “mark up”.
However good business is about both parties being happy with the end result, it is always good to talk.
RE: Billing Question
Don't sell your time short. If you spend time on a project, bill the project. When you go to prepare the bill, if you feel it is too much, then list a discount as Good Customer or some such.
My wife does handmade cards for any occasion and related crafts. Getting her to charge a profitable price for a card has been hard. She says who would pay more than $X for a card. I tell her that you can't get a commercial card at WalMart for twice that price. I would put her webpage here but it might violate posting rules.
"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."
Ben Loosli
RE: Billing Question