Fees for preparing commercial energy forms (FL)

[PatBethea]

For those of you practicing in Florida, I'm curious as to how you charge for preparing commercial energy forms. I've been treating it as a "service" - what I mean by this is that I've only been charging a nominal fee of somewhere between $250 - $500 in the hopes of attracting engineering work later on. What I find is that this doesn't happen. Typically I'm dealing with contractors/developers/owners used to getting the energy forms for residential construction done for free by the local electricity providers. As a result they bristle at being charged anything for the commercial forms. It's busy work and it can be quite time consuming. The EnergyGauge software is a piece of crap. For these reasons, I'm contemplating dropping this service altogether, except on projects where I designed the HVAC and/or plumbing systems.

What are ya'll doing out there? How are you charging?

 

[marcoh]

I don't live in Florida (or the US) but we have similar requirements here in Oz and we charge the time it takes at out normal hourly rates. Clients generally get a shock at first but come back when everybody else charges similar amounts.

As you mentioned we often do it for projects thinking we may get more work out out it, but that rarely seems to occur. Typically the projects are design and construct projects where the contractors do not have the expertise to to do the analysis.

 

[DonPhillips]

I also charge my normal hourly rate but I have not done one where I was not doing the MEP design.

Don Phillips

http://worthingtonengineering.com

 

[Wareagl487]

We do quite a bit of work in Florida. The cost of producing the energy compliance forms is included in our base fee. If I were to break the cost of generating the required forms out, I wouldn't be less than $1,000 - more for larger projects.

You are correct PatBethea, EnergyGauge is the biggest P.O.S. I have EVER used. I've often thought that the developer of that software must be the son of someone in the FL state legislator - cause how else could a completely worthless software be the monopoly for energy compliance?

Andy W.