Storage Building Design Fees

[CBSE]

What have people typically used for fees on storage units? I received a phone call from a regular client asking me to get him a proposal by the end of the day for designing storage units:

40'x180'x10' Tall - 20'x20' units
45'x384'x16' Tall - 12'x45' units

Obviously they are very redundant and the occupancy will be limited. I don't know how to bid this type of building. I looked at purely square footage and it seamed unreasonable, then I looked at simply a single unit (20'x20' unit), and that seamed entirely too low.

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[jike]

I typically look at all jobs based upon......

1) No. of Drawings
2) Percentage of Construction Cost
3) Individual design elements
Add in any costs for field inspection / construction administration / coordination with contractor / building design submittal and approval

 

[BAretired]

I would not give a proposal on such scant information.

BA

 

[CBSE]

Thanks. That's the route I was going down but started to think the fees were too high for the amount of effort involved. I've lowered my fee from what I normally would charge on a square footage basis, but still kept it reasonable because the amount of exposure is still there.

 

[jike]

Put whatever limitations on your proposal that you feel are reasonable.

 

[ztengguy]

These could be more involved, lighter materials used, trying to use the least amount of connections, etc. I am surprised he isnt going with a 'pre-packaged/engineered' deal.

But, as for any design, try and get the highest the customer will be willing to pay.

 

[Canuck67]

These types of buildings are typically very cheaply constructed, i.e. designed to the bone. Designing such buildings, similar to PEMB, takes a lot of design effort unless you have done a lot of them before. Keep in mind, whenever a contractor is given limited time to prepare a price quotation on limited information, it is almost always very high. If you do end up submitting a fee estimate, make it that ... an estimate .... to be refined once the full scope of work is understood. Even if your fee varies by $10k after you understand the full scope, given the cost of construction, I would doubt it would have a significant impact on the overall budget.

 

[BUGGAR]

We just had a local windstorm in SoCal that flattened a couple light-framed metal buildings at a nearby air field. Along with your estimate, you might casually drop some photos of such buildings. Whenever we interview potential clients in our office, we bring out all the pictures of structure failures and hang them in our conference room. It seems to add credibility to our proposal.

Bob

 

[CBSE]

Thanks for all of the input. I think I have a pretty good fee set for the project and the complexity of it and I feel comfortable. There are definitely a lot of unknowns with it, but I always include a clause in these proposals that I reserve the right to increase the fee if it is more complex than originally stated. So far, I haven't had any complaints on increasing when I need to.

I was curious why they aren't just going to a metal building manufacturer...but I didn't ask that question.

Thanks for the opinions.