Structural Fee 1

[jike]

What would you use as a ballpark fee for structural engineering on a $20 million office complex? It may be one or two multi-story buildings with steel frame in a non-seismic zone. If the project goes with one building, it will probably have a curved face. Foundations will be spread footings.

At this point, I know no more than this. Cost should include checking of shop drawings and a few site visits.

 

[kvillebasser]

In my opinion, you could do this several ways........

You could base your fee on the percentages shown in the Means construction costs book for 2004....

or...

What this office does is base our fee on the GENERAL construction cost of the project....usually about 1% of general construction.....

or....

You could base your fee on a percentage of the Architect's fee.....which would be between 12% and 16% of the Architect's design fee.

I wouldnt try and put hours to each job and then try to back out the fee based on hours times the hourly rate.

Also, these fee numbers include shop drawing review and a handful of site visits.

 

[samdamon]

Jike- There were several good threads on structural fees a while back in this forum. If you do an advanced search they should turn up. regards

 

[Lutfi]

Buy the ASCE guide titled "How to Work Effectively with Consulting Engineers" Getting the best project at the right price. It is an excellent resource for fees determination and charts. This is a must for any one who is about to go into the design profession.

Florida Department of management services publishes fee curves that cover various types of projects.

Having said this, I am really questioning how you can go after a project that is 20 million and you cannot figure your fees? Do not set yourself up to fail! I am business owner and has been doing this for over 21 years.

Good luck

 

[jike]

Lufti-

I am part of a 50 person A/E firm with all disciplines. We are discussing allocation of our fee for various disciplines for this project. This is an average size project for us.

I know what our costs need to be to do the project structurally but there has been some discussion about cutting us short. I am looking for confirmation of my estimate.

Once the scope has been developed, we will produce a more detailed estimate.

I have been doing this type of work for 33 years.

Thanks for your comments!

 

[Lutfi]

I was not sure of your situation. Having said that, we have recently took on a project that has a construction value of about 20 million dollars. We have full service in house. In this particular project, we did SE and MEP design. Our total fee was about 46% of the Architects fee. The following link has useful fee percentages from Means

http://www.maggertengineers.com/EngFees/MeansFees.html

I can send you a scan of the Florida DMS fee curves as well.

It is hard to determine fees when you work with architects. They like to keep the lion share and most of the design liability is with the SE and MEP.

I Hope this helps

 

[ofthesea]

Lutfi,

Could you fax the FLorida DMS fee curves to me.

Thanks,

PJD
Mendenhall Smith Structural Engineers
702-367-2727

 

[Lutfi]

It is on its way.