How do you estimate fire sprinkler design hours?

[ShawnO1]

Well here's the deal. I came from the field straight into design. I've been in design for 15 years but have recently been asked to estimate design hours for upcoming bids. I don't really have a quick and dirty way to figure my design time as I haven't been tracking over the years to see how much per pendent/upright/fire pump/standpipe/attic head etc... it takes me to design.

I can do a calc in less than an hour if not too crazy and I know that if it's a survey job it's sort of guess.

But does anyone have a good base for estimate standard project design wise? Many opinions are welcome and appreciated!

TIA

 

[skdesigner]

Best way I've figured is to express it as hours per sprinkler at a determined value per sprinkler, same as we factor installation hours.

Start by figuring the designer's cost per hour (annual salary + benefits while accounting for sick days, vacation time and non-billable hours worked).

Determine an acceptable labour factor per sprinkler. After 15 years of design, you should have a good idea of how long certain types of projects take. Play around with the labour factor until it expresses an accurate amount of design hours.

Express your designer cost as hrs per sprinkler x number of sprinklers x dollars per sprinkler

Next, add in your fixed costs:

-Engineer's review and seal
-flow test
-designer time for periodic site inspections
-Engineer's sign off at project completion (don't forget per diem)
-office supplies (plotter ink, paper, equipment amortization and ongoing software costs)

Note that I'm in Canada, so the Engineer's requirement may not apply to you like it does to me.

All this cobbled together should give you a fairly accurate design cost. No inclusion of overhead and profit or value added taxes until the end of the estimate.

 

[skdesigner]

one change,

equate should be:

hours per sprinkler x number of sprinklers x dollars per HOUR

 

[Oremus]

After 15 years you should have a pretty good idea of what it takes you by looking at the plans. That's what I do. I'll have a look at the plans the estimator is bidding from and within a few minutes I can tell him give me x number of hours then he'll cushion it with a few more hours. I've never liked prices per sprinkler or sq. ft. since you can have a relatively small project that turns out to be really nasty and sometimes those estimators aren't real good at looking at the mechanical drawings and seeing any potential tight spots requiring add'l sprinklers resulting in his 'bid sprinkler counts' being different from actual design counts but he based design hours on his faulty counts (if you go $ per sprinkler)then both sprinkler counts and design cost will suffer. Things happen.