Even for small jobs, I'd label the beams or columms initially on the plan (even *.pdf plans) as B101, B102, etc for first floor beams, and B201, B202, etc for 2nd floor beams, etc. I'd then use those beam marks for my design notes... same with columns C01, etc... even my spreadsheets are set up that way... with the initial design info that stays throughout listed as variables, not as cell references... and then I'd just copy the block of design data and paste below... A sheet for simple floor beam design attached... one of many I use...

https://res.cloudinary.com/engineering-com/raw/upload/v1684560661/tips/Simple_Span_Beam_Design_fca7tu.xlsm

a more recent version...

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So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

Haha. I could have written this post. I feel your pain.

I have a 'house design procedure' I worked up. I'll type it up and share it next time I'm at my computer. But like dik said, for beams and headers and such labeling them as B-X, H-X, C-X and so on is a good convention.

I have a procedure similar to dik's. For each floor plan, I'll have a layer in cad with beam and column labels, like Beam 1A, 1B, etc. for 1st floor, 2A, 2B, etc. for 2nd floor... The analysis software or spreadsheet I'm using for member design will reference these labels. I'll often also use this layer to keep track of loads coming from above the floor level and loads being transferred down.

When I first start designing a floor, I'll usually come up with a preliminary framing layout with beam and column labels as noted above, and I'll make the labels red in cad. After each member has been design, I'll change the label to white or green.

I need a key plan for sure, but I kind of like the approach to do it in CAD. Especially for projects (like this one) that I will be drafting myself.

The non-printing layer is a pretty genius idea.

I've been trying to get out of doing the drafting myself (it's about 3/4 of the time, and I can hire it out for about 1/8th of the fee...), so I may not adopt that one for myself, but something to keep in mind...

Rough residential design procedure (can also help with formatting and organization of calcs):

Determine Loading

Preliminary Lateral Analysis:

Preliminary Gravity Analysis:

Design Secondary (Joist/Rafter) Framing

Design Shear Walls and Diaphragms (need dead load reactions from secondary framing)

Design Primary Framing (need secondary framing reactions and shear wall chord reactions)

Design Foundations

Sketch sections and project specific detailing/connections

Write notes and/or specifications

Finalize drawings.

The drafting stinks on these projects. I mean in general these big residential jobs are the worst $ per hour based on how much time we have to spend. I try to avoid them all together because they beat you down on your fees and make you feel bad for charging $10k when they can take twice as long as a much more profitable job.

I've grown a thick skin in a short period of time. My fee is my fee. You either want me on the project or your don't. If you're just looking for someone's stamp to get you through permitting, go beat up someone else. If you believe I will add value to this project, then sign the proposal and let's get started.

I have a 4 month backlog of fees set on my terms, no negotiating.

This would not help in the short term, but long term if you plan on continuing in this profession.

We have a pretty slick spreadsheet that has links for everything. The first few tabs set up the loads from snow, live, seismic, and wind, and allow you to select those different load sets through the rest of the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet itself handles 5 stories of shear walls with 15 different lateral lines and multiple options per line, 150 beams (simply supported with either or both ends cantilevered or multi-spanning with uniform loads), 20 checks for studs, 50 checks for foundation walls (simply supported), 30 checks for rafters/joists, and a check for a simple diaphragm. All points loads from beams can be "called" later in the spreadsheet, either applying to other beams or to the foundations. All of these calcs are linked to schedules in excel corresponding to the marks called out on the plan. The schedules can either be copied and pasted directly on a pdf or entered in as a data link into AutoCAD, which can automatically update. We have a word doc that has links to all those different calcs and by simply opening the word doc those reports filter and update. Our details are also auto populated in the spreadsheet depending on what beams/joists/shear walls you put in, and those details auto-filter at the end of the spreadsheet, and our AutoCAD tools will then bring in those details to our DWG.

Through all this automation we've found that even small $300 garages can be profitable because of the significant automation behind the scenes. This has taken YEARS for the company to develop and it was mostly accomplished through cheap yet innovative students. Residential work can be super profitable if you have automation for all those routine tasks. This also allows our time to be spent on the engineering aspects of the project rather than the reports.

Quote (YoungGunner)

Residential work can be super profitable if you have automation for all those routine tasks.

This.

YoungGunner...I'm not in Utah and will never compete with you...what would it take to get a copy? (I'm kidding....unless you're willing to share)

I have one in the works - the goal is to be able to enter some basic parameters and have it automate the lateral analysis. I haven't figured out the best way to automate gravity calcs, though. I've tried software packages, etc., but none of them work as well as I'd like.

I used to do a lot of stiffened slab foundation houses in rural Ontario, not the wood framing, but the foundations. I had a series of templates for rectangular, 'L' shaped, or 'T' shaped buildings and standard details and notes for them. I could 'stretch' the various elements to suit the new dimensions and with associative dimensioning, the plans were dimensionally correct, and detailed.

There was an hours work in producing a complete set of drawings, including standard notes, maybe more if I had to drive out to the country to look after a soil 'test pit' excavation. The standard drawings even had the soil profile included... Fees for these drawings were in the order of $1000, and it was easy to make money with them. For a simple house, there were three drawings to the set... there was even a drawing list included. About the only thing that changed was the Project Title.

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So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

Quote (phamENG)

YoungGunner...I'm not in Utah and will never compete with you...what would it take to get a copy? (I'm kidding....unless you're willing to share)

Unfortunately it is a very proprietary spreadsheet. That is impressive you have one in the works to complete lateral analysis. While we have a lot of automation, on small jobs we are simply reduced to taking a plethora of measurements and entering them into our analysis, which will autosize most every member. Complicated structures still require a lot of thought and engineering judgement.

Yeah, I figured as much. Certainly worth asking, though.

So I cheated a bit on mine for lateral. Since I'm in hurricane country with no real seismic activity (you can feel one distant quake every few generations), it's all wind. And the WFCM has these handy guides for simple houses, like this one: 115mph Exposure C

So I validated a couple of them, then entered a bunch of their results into a spreadsheet, used some interpolation to fill in between, and then did some validation on those results. The results were acceptable to me (within a few %), so now I use that to determine MWFRS loading at each level. It's a whole lot easier than trying to do a detailed directional or even envelope calculation in the background.

There's still plenty of manual alignment and summing of forces, but it's coming along...slowly.

Quote (YoungGunner)

Through all this automation we've found that even small $300 garages can be profitable because of the significant automation behind the scenes

$300 and Garage should never be used in the same sentence!

Especially since construction costs for 3 car garages pushed up well over $200k in my area a year or two ago. Say what you will about basing a fee on construction costs, but 0.12% is just laughable.

I label the members on the plans. In CAD you can put the labels on a no plot layer, in Revit, which I've been preferring, I just have a text type that is big and red that is hidden on the plan, so you just select show hidden items whenever you want see them.

Then, my spreadsheets are setup so each member has one line in excel. There's a beam table, footing table, column table, and wall bracing table, and each member gets a new row in the corresponding table.

I have a calculation autocad file where I XREF every floor 200 ft apart. I choose 200 ft because for sure it is big enough for any house I do. To help track load, I have a block with 4 circles that are 200 ft apart. It is a guide so if I move the circle, it moves it on all floor. I can do several circles if I want. I color coded by layers (whether the load will transfer down or not) and reference the beam # for calc.

What I'd love is for Enercalc to hurry up and expand their "Enercalc for Revit" tool into wood members, columns, and foundations.

It seems odd to me that they didn't start with wood. After all, when I'm doing a steel framed building I'm in RISA - using Enercalc for anything more than assisting with wind analysis or something doesn't even cross my mind. But smaller projects and wood buildings...that's the ideal use for Enercalc for me. But perhaps I don't 'fit the mold'.

Quote (XR250)

$300 and Garage should never be used in the same sentence!

I'm with XR250 here, I wouldn't touch a garage for less than 1500 and that is for the most basic 2 car simple garage. Drafting alone will cost you over 300. I really wish more peopled valued their knowledge instead of providing a disservice for our industry driving prices down.

For me, I would do a simple one car for $800. Would take 45 minutes total most likely as I do my own drafting.

More automation means more profit. Not lower your price even more.

In regards to the comments about a garage for $300 - it's not us, believe me. It's just the nature of the market we are in. We would be laughed at if a simple garage cost more than that. Lot of engineers here willing to do it for even less.

@YoungGunner - that is good to hear you are not one of the ones driving it down. When I get requests like that I just tell them good luck. They usually get something but it has lots of issues during construction. It seems the garages we have been seeing have been simple 2 car on the face, but with all the architectural flair which makes it complicated, hence higher fees required.

What YoungGunner describes is similar to a system that I'm currently working on. I even took it to the extreme in that I'm taking a year or so off from normal engineering work to work on this. At my last job, there were a lot of tasks that could be made significantly more efficient, except there was never time to improve the process (gotta be billable, etc.). Aside from project communication, which might be difficult to optimize, for most design tasks, I think it should easily be possible for me to achieve a 2x efficiency increase on the low end with 10x being possible for some things. (I would bet that YoungGunner has seen this sort of productivity increase, maybe higher, although that's none of my business.)

In terms of project fees, I always try to charge what the market will bear, unless that would result in a fee so low that the project isn't worth the liability, in which case I would avoid that project. If I get every project I give a price on, then I figure I'm not charging enough for the work. As a general policy, I usually won't stamp anything for less than $1,000. Now, if I'm actually able to improve my workflow to the point that I'm twice as efficient, I'm not going to charge less for a given project. If anything, I might charge more considering that I can now get the project done more quickly, which is presumably a greater value to the client. I would never do a garage for $300, unless I was starving. That's just insane.

What is crazy to me is, it's more expensive to trim a tree or have the weeds in my back yard removed than a homeowner wants to pay for the design of a garage.

Last week someone called me to look at their house because they were having an issue with the floor and some sheetrock cracks. So I said it'll be $550 just for the site visit, then if you need a letter or drawing maybe more we'll see.

The homeowner goes "$550?! That's like the cost of a home inspection! I thought you were going to say something like $70." I said uh yeah I know how much home inspections cost, but I'm a licensed engineer, that's quite the step up. I told him you're lucky I said $550 because most people aren't going to answer the phone for less than $1k.

I didn't care about the guy complaining about the price, but the funniest part was $70. Who even comes up with that number? That's like 3 things at a grocery store these days. I'm not sure $70 even covers gas and the tolls.
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But anyway, back to my OP, I love my spreadsheets, but 95% of my beam designs for residential are in Forte. Very easy to use, can link loads, change things quickly. It's free too. I couldn't imagine having giant spreadsheets like described above. I cannot imagine the amount of time spent for some of those. I want as many things done on computer programs as possible. I just want to refine my labeling and numbering system to speed up the design and drafting processes.

I try to avoid giving members specific names based on room/location and just stick with LT1, B1, C1, etc.. Occasionally, I will label just beams and then call the column C at B1 or F at C at B1, etc... so it's associated with at least some member on my keyplan. Most often I am working on the designs before drafting has started, so I will sketch my layout for drafting and just add the member designation there to go back to when I can create the keyplan based on the structural drawings. When I am drafting the project myself, I will just add the beam designation on a no-plot layer in CAD for quick reference.

I am in the one-man-band business right now so I will be doing all of my own drafting for this project and any future ones.

I do like the no plot layer suggestions. When I worked for a real office doing a keyplan was no problem, but since it's just me now, saving time and incorporating the keyplan into CAD would save me a lot of time. Time is money.

@JerseyShore. $550? I thought mine were a lot at $375. Mine usually only last 20 minutes so it can be hard to justify to the homeowner any more than that. Sometimes I do $500 if the crawlspace is reported to be a bit of a mess or I have to drive more than 30 minutes each way.
Maybe I should up my game.

@jerseyshore

I just opened Forte for the first time and made an account. I cant believe that it's free! Most residential really doesn't even need paid calc software it looks like. Thank you so much for this.

Quote (XR250)

Maybe I should up my game.

It is my opinion you should, my min is upwards of 750, if close by, but this always includes written one page report/summary (more pages if pictures included) as I'm tired of the verbal "he said she said" crap.

I usually charge $500 minimum. Maybe $400 if it's right in town. That's just for site visits. No report or anything else. I try to price things based on around $200/hr but still keep to that minimum. Don't want to sell myself short. And probably 70% of house site visits around here are crawlspaces that are a mess so I need to get paid accordingly.

I'd say most report and site visit jobs are $700-900 depending on how long the report will be.

It's summertime now so driving times around here will be twice as bad starting this weekend so I might tack on $50 to every job haha.

XR250, around here, $375 is what one of the local unlicensed jacklegs charges for a "structural inspection". He is blatantly practicing engineering without a license. He uses the word "Engineering" in his company name, and he lied to me personally on the phone by claiming that he is licensed, but he is not. He doesn't provide a report to his customers, even if they ask for one. By my estimation, I think he is probably trying to leave less of a paper trail by not providing a tangible deliverable. I spoke to one home owner recently whom he told to sell their house over a few cracked drywall joints, but refused to provide anything in writing. Thankfully, he is currently under investigation by the state board. I am waiting with anticipation to see if a cease and desist order has any effect on his business practices, but honestly, I'm not holding my breath.

I heard of a guy similar to that up north that markets his business as "remove-a-basement-column workshop" or something like that. He sells it to be structural engineering without saying the word engineering and his "designs" include slapping an LVL or two to the side of a 3-2x8 basement girder to open it up.

You can't worry about these types of clowns though. For me, I can afford to charge on the lower end of the ranges because I have no overhead besides insurance, but that doesn't mean I'm going to sell myself short. People need to pay not only for our time but also our experience.

Quote (gte447f)

XR250, around here, $375 is what one of the local unlicensed jacklegs charges for a "structural inspection"

I won't ever do a complete "structural inspection". For a $375 site visit, I will look at a few issues that were raised in a pre-purchase home inspection report or look at a concern a homeowner has or an issue a contractor needs fixing. Maybe time to charge more?!
Funny, most people are happy with my fees but I get the occasional, "you were here only 15 minutes and you want me to pay you what?"

Quote (jerseyshore)

because I have no overhead besides insurance,

Same here. I work out of my guest bedroom. Don't have any subscription software except Office. I'm not a member of any organization.
I keep it pretty lean. But, yeah, i'm gonna up my rates.

Quote (XR250)

Same here. I work out of my guest bedroom. Don't have any subscription software except Office. I'm not a member of any organization.
I keep it pretty lean. But, yeah, i'm gonna up my rates.

Really? I am paying for google for a basic website and google drive. AutoCAD LT. Office. Adobe acrobat pro. Quickbook.

It's certainly possible. You don't need a website (and if you do, there are ways to get free ones), you can store data locally, there are alternative CAD programs that allow for a perpetual license, or old AutoCAD programs can still be used (I work with a designer that always asks that I save my drawings down to 2010 format for that reason), there are free PDF markup programs out there, and you can do all the accounting for a small LLC in Excel if you know what you're doing.

Having the latest and greatest is generally more convenient and can help automate some tasks, but if you built your business around manual methods and you're comfortable with them, you don't need a bunch of subscriptions.

I am paying the very basic google so I get my domain email. It comes with google drive. I just want to make sure my files are safe. I am not nerdy enough to set up my own back up system. Plus if my house is on fire, I wont lose my stuff. That would be very horrible starting from scratch with all of the details.

I do have a website and the hosting fees but all my software is paid for except Office.
Oh, I forgot, I do pay my Acct. every month to use Quickbooks online. Also a few dollars for Google storage.
My overhead with insurance ends up being less than 20k per year.

I pay for insurance, Enercalc, Freshbooks for nice looking invoices, and Ram Elements. My dad paid for my domain as a present for starting out and I just use Outlook for emails.

I already paid for 2TB of Google Drive storage so I just use that for saving everything. Google sheets for my record keeping and financing. Foxit free version for PDFs. Had a previous version of AutoCad and Office on my computer already. Forte is also free of course. Want to switch over to quickbooks soon, but who has the time.

Insurance is obviously the big one for us structural engineers, so keeping the rest of the costs down is important. For me I'm busy just doing what I'm doing so I don't need to go crazy and get an office and a wide format printer or anything like that right now.