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Structural Consulting Fee's

Structural Consulting Fee's

Structural Consulting Fee's

(OP)
I am wondering what you all typically charge for structural engineering design fee's for general building design and construction (primarily east coast, mid-Atlantic region)?

When quoting a project for a client do you typically use a percentage of the construction cost for the structural engineering services? Does this fee include all phases of design and CA tasks (reviewing shop drawings, RFI's and site visits)? If not, what extra do you typically charge?

Finally, when you break down time allocation for different tasks within a project, what percentage of man hours do you allocate to different tasks (engineering, drafting, admin/clerical)? I've typically heard 40 man hours per full size sheet, and 1/3 of hours goes to drafting and admin while the other 2/3 is engineering time.

Thanks for any and all input.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

40 hours for a full sheet sounds high to me. It usually ends up being about $2000 - $3000 for each full size sheet i produce.
I typically do all jobs hourly and charge $160 for design, drafting, site visits and correspondence. I do not charge for admin.
I am located in central NC.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

Determining the number of hours required to provide the engineering services is a better way of developing a fee proposal.

Here is why. On a relatively simple, new building project, the structural engineering fee will probably be between 1/2% and 1% of the construction cost. However, on a remodeling project, I have seen a structural engineering fee as high as 20% of the construction cost. A lot depends on the services you offer during the construction phase as well.

And I have found number of sheets of drawings doesn't always correlate to fee either.

DaveAtkins

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

It also depends on what type of client you're working for. I do most of my work straight for homeowners or small businesses, and where I live, they balk at higher rates. I too charge hourly, though a bit less than ExcelEngineering, and that same rate covers everything (except for forensic work - that's a different rate for investigation and then again for deposition/testimony). I'm in Western NC.

Hey Excel - cheers from the mountains! We lived in Greensboro for a while, about 10 years ago, and have been over here since.

Please remember: we're not all guys!

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

Generally, I find clients ultimately decide based on the total cost you quote them. But they seem to like it when your hourly rate is low, even if your total price is high. Justifying all the hours you will need in engineering terminology will usually glaze their eyes and they just go back to the total cost. But they do like it when you make less per hour than they do.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

I mostly follow the DaveAtkins approach with trying to figure out the amount of time it would take to do the work and then multiplying it by your hourly rate. I usually include CA in my proposals...... but have run into some bad luck lately with this (reviewing show drawings 3-4 times, lingering construction causing more site visits than anticipated) and am considering altering my approach.

FYI, some engineers frown upon providing proposals to clients. However, if you are just starting out I don't know how else get into the business.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

Aren't engineers ethically bound to provide written proposals in some states? I think you would need to be very close to a client on a small project to want to do a job without a proposal / agreement first.

"We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us." -WSC

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

MJB I don't know about that, but their are plenty of holier than thou people on this forum who say they would never provide a proposal to a client. If they were requested to provide a proposal they would:

A: be offended
B: refuse to do work with the client

I don't think these people work in our segment of the industry though.

On small emergency projects, I will sometimes not provide a written proposal to the client to expedite the work.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

We do 100 hours per sheet, up to maybe 140 hours. This is in brownfield industrial environments, so the drawings end up being quite full. These threads are interesting but pretty useless since so much differs from project to project.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

I know for my work there is a crazy variation in $/sheet, so its not possible to use as a benchmark for setting fees. We have completed jobs for between $1,000 and $16,000/sheet. It depends heavily on the ancillary services per sheet.

Why would any engineer not want to do a proposal?

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

Quote (glass99)

Why would any engineer not want to do a proposal?

I am not sure, either. Qualification-based selection, unethical to compete based upon fees, other? No idea.

Interested in the rationale.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

We typically calculate how long we anticipate the job will take from Engineering. Upfront time, Gravity time, Lateral Time, Present SD, DD, 90%, Foundation Details, X-details per level, then how long it would take to draft all that per item (usually twice as long as the calc at a minimum but a lower rater), then i typically multiply all of that by 25% as it always takes longer than i think. Then compare to cost per sheet basis and construction fee. As others say the general percent/sheet cost for all new simple building is far less than a remodel.

We recently did a rebuild of a building that the center burnt down... Spent as much time dealing with design as we did with Insurance consulting and even more time measuring in the field. This means the cost was really high per sheet. I think in hindsight our total fee was 13k per sheet.

CA we bill as cost plus with an estimate of time based on engineering fee and construction. Typically if Engr fee was too low for great drawings and coordination time then CA increases.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

I do my estimates by breaking down the tasks involved and allocating time to each. A typical task list will be meetings, sketches/thinking, analysis, drawings, specifications, site visits, out of town travel, phone discussions, administration, information search and reports. For me, drafting is less than a quarter of the whole. On a renovation job in particular, CA can be half the work.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

Wow, you guys are throwing around some big numbers. Typically I can't get more than $300-$400 out of residential job in my neck of the woods. Usually one of these jobs will only take me a couple of days to complete (one structural drawing with an accompanying calc. report) so I guess it isn't too bad but higher numbers would be nice.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

In my previous life as a bridge engineer people talked about 100hrs per sheet, and people were grumpy about it because in the "good old days" it used to be like 150hr/sheet.

Brand name architects in LA I am presently working with seem to spend on a lobby renovation about 150hr/sheet.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

$300-400 a sheet? That's like 3-4 hours max, we spend more time than that checking a drawing.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

Well you can go ahead and provide a detailed proposal and let your possible client shop it around.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

Medeek,

That's generally how residential goes. No contractor wants to pay what the time is actually worse. We do all of our residential work at an hourly rate up to a maximum. The maximum is based on our estimation of how long it will actually take.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

In my area the typical residential report goes from $350 (something like an eccentric pad footing) to $2500+ for complex tall wall systems, full ICF designs, ext...

For example - that tall wall you posted about a little while back, Medeek, I would have charged something in the order of $700.

The key is dynamic pricing! It is easy to charge $750 for work on a 2M house for the same design you would charge 350 for on a 500k house.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

Dynamic pricing - what the market will bear.

When I lived in Seattle, there were "special" rates for engineering the homes of Microsoft Millionaires.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

Quote (No contractor wants to pay what the time is actually worse.)


I'm not sure if that's:
A Freudian Slip
Trying to make your point
A $300 design result

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

Haha, Typo. I would never provide a design I wasn't comfortable with. My point was no contractor (residential specifically) wants to pay for the actual time it takes. Residential at my old office was a time filler because some fees are better than no fees but generally we charged less than what the time dictated (e.g. we'd charge them $1000 but it probably took 15 hours). My new office only does residential for a select number of clients (Those would be the ones that bring us the rest of their non-residential work consistently)

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

Hey SLTA,

Where in NC Mountains are you?

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

Near Asheville! Love it here. My backyard is the Parkway. How about you?

Please remember: we're not all guys!

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

A lot of engineers won't do residential work for the reasons mentioned. Or, contrariwise, some specialize in it because they've learned how to make it work for them. And many an engineer has done it and not been paid...

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

@SLTA
I'm in Chapel Hill.
Got a Father-in-Law in Cashiers and a Brother-in-Law in Highlands who are in real estate. Maybe you have done work for them? They say they have to go to Asheville to get an Engineer.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

Excel, could be! I tend to stick within 40 miles of Asheville, though. Chapel Hill is a cool town - I was just there for a forensic engineering seminar.

Please remember: we're not all guys!

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

When I prepare a quote for specified engineering services (commercial or residential buildings) I give a good deal of thought to the degree risk exposure I feel I’m getting in to if I get the job. Are any of us ever completely confident that the project will be completed without any gaffs?
BTW I can’t see any merit in a fee of services per sheet of paper.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

On the recent tall wall residence I negotiated the price up to $750 since I also had to do some creative thinking on how to make the portal frames work without resorting to steel moment frames, the contractors was very explicit about not wanting steel moment frames (ie. Simpson Strong Wall etc...) All in all I probably spent well over a week researching portal frames as well as consulting with other engineers both on the internet and locally about the wall of windows design I was trying to construct. Even at $750 I lost money on that job but in the long term I suppose I gained due to the education it imposed on me.

However, at the residential rates I am finding it hard to make at living at this. I now get it why a lot of engineers don't mess with the low hanging fruit, lets face it time is money and you only have so much time.

The only way to make it work in my opinion is to make oneself uber efficient at handling these jobs. Everything, as much as possible, needs to be automated or canned. I find that one cannot justify writing out 20 pages of hand calcs and commentary/notes when it might take up to 2 days for a job that is only worth $300.

RE: Structural Consulting Fee's

One of the other issues one should consider is the liability, especially in California, that you assume in these small jobs. Sometimes you can get collected into a litigation action because of bad workmanship or outright cheating by the contractor - which you have no knowledge of. Sometimes it's the owner themselves that do something bad - but you might get the blame.

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