Structural fees for retail-dollars per square foot

[DJSteve]

We've been asked to provide a proposal for a retail project in California, about 200,000 sf. Never having done a retail project this large, I've been asking around and it seems that some of my friendly competitors price these jobs on a $/sf basis, instead of a percentage of contstruction cost, sheet count, etc. Anyone else have that experience? From what I've heard, about $1/sf is the going rate around here, which is pretty close to 0.75% of const. cost in this market.

Thanks for your help.

 

[msquared48]

Yep. $0.80 to $1.25 per square foot, depending on the complexity of the project.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

http://mmcengineering.tripod.com

 

[DJSteve]

Thanks. Now we just have to figure out how to do a good job for that fee!

 

[dik]

Do you have standard details, standard notes, etc. Thing that mean you don't have to reinvent the wheel. In your proposal, you have to stipulate that there is a given level of complexity that you have to accommodate and that the design will be good, but, not necessarily optimum.

Dik

 

[DJSteve]

Yes, we've been doing wood frame design for many years, mainly custom design though. This type of large wood frame retail job with lots of repetition is new to us. I guess in some ways I should look at it like a big apartment building (which we have indeed done a lot of). In those cases our fee is usually 0.80-0.90% of construction cost which is about $1.50/sf. Im guessing, and others confirm that single story retail should be less than 5 story apartments on a per sq ft basis.