Structural Consulting Fee's 1

[SWEG]

I am wondering what you all typically charge for structural engineering design fee's for general building design and construction (primarily east coast, mid-Atlantic region)?

When quoting a project for a client do you typically use a percentage of the construction cost for the structural engineering services? Does this fee include all phases of design and CA tasks (reviewing shop drawings, RFI's and site visits)? If not, what extra do you typically charge?

Finally, when you break down time allocation for different tasks within a project, what percentage of man hours do you allocate to different tasks (engineering, drafting, admin/clerical)? I've typically heard 40 man hours per full size sheet, and 1/3 of hours goes to drafting and admin while the other 2/3 is engineering time.

Thanks for any and all input.

 

[BUGGAR]

Dynamic pricing - what the market will bear.

When I lived in Seattle, there were "special" rates for engineering the homes of Microsoft Millionaires.

 

[JedClampett]

I'm not sure if that's:
A Freudian Slip
Trying to make your point
A $300 design result

 

[jayrod12]

Haha, Typo. I would never provide a design I wasn't comfortable with. My point was no contractor (residential specifically) wants to pay for the actual time it takes. Residential at my old office was a time filler because some fees are better than no fees but generally we charged less than what the time dictated (e.g. we'd charge them $1000 but it probably took 15 hours). My new office only does residential for a select number of clients (Those would be the ones that bring us the rest of their non-residential work consistently)

 

[XR250]

Hey SLTA,

Where in NC Mountains are you?

 

[SLTA]

Near Asheville! Love it here. My backyard is the Parkway. How about you?

Please remember: we're not all guys!

 

[Archie264]

A lot of engineers won't do residential work for the reasons mentioned. Or, contrariwise, some specialize in it because they've learned how to make it work for them. And many an engineer has done it and not been paid...

 

[XR250]

@SLTA
I'm in Chapel Hill.
Got a Father-in-Law in Cashiers and a Brother-in-Law in Highlands who are in real estate. Maybe you have done work for them? They say they have to go to Asheville to get an Engineer.

 

[SLTA]

Excel, could be! I tend to stick within 40 miles of Asheville, though. Chapel Hill is a cool town - I was just there for a forensic engineering seminar.

Please remember: we're not all guys!

 

[rittz]

When I prepare a quote for specified engineering services (commercial or residential buildings) I give a good deal of thought to the degree risk exposure I feel I’m getting in to if I get the job. Are any of us ever completely confident that the project will be completed without any gaffs?
BTW I can’t see any merit in a fee of services per sheet of paper.

 

[medeek]

On the recent tall wall residence I negotiated the price up to $750 since I also had to do some creative thinking on how to make the portal frames work without resorting to steel moment frames, the contractors was very explicit about not wanting steel moment frames (ie. Simpson Strong Wall etc...) All in all I probably spent well over a week researching portal frames as well as consulting with other engineers both on the internet and locally about the wall of windows design I was trying to construct. Even at $750 I lost money on that job but in the long term I suppose I gained due to the education it imposed on me.

However, at the residential rates I am finding it hard to make at living at this. I now get it why a lot of engineers don't mess with the low hanging fruit, lets face it time is money and you only have so much time.

The only way to make it work in my opinion is to make oneself uber efficient at handling these jobs. Everything, as much as possible, needs to be automated or canned. I find that one cannot justify writing out 20 pages of hand calcs and commentary/notes when it might take up to 2 days for a job that is only worth $300.

 

[oldrunner]

One of the other issues one should consider is the liability, especially in California, that you assume in these small jobs. Sometimes you can get collected into a litigation action because of bad workmanship or outright cheating by the contractor - which you have no knowledge of. Sometimes it's the owner themselves that do something bad - but you might get the blame.