pumbing pricing??????????

[mike31]

i know lots of people have asked similar questions



although this is a basic website would anybody consider this a useful tool for pricing jobs. Im in training at college, about to start C&G Level 3 but as yet cannot find anyone offering work experience but have been asked by family and friends to rearrange bathrooms, sort leaking taps, install outside taps etc. As I have not seen what plumbers would charge for certain jobs i am just looking for advice.

it says it finds a sort of national average(labour only) and i wondered if that was fairly accurate


im in Yorkshire

thanks

checkyourprice.co.uk

 

[Plumbstar Tom]

just charge what you think is fair for your capabilities

if you take twice as long as your average plumber then charge half as much

if they aint happy tell them to go eslewhere then

 

[Toddyplumb]

Try Spons

 

[dontknowitall]

A little tongue in cheek this, but would you charge the Lancastrians twice as much?


I think a more accurate estimate would be a little more than the local average wage. Where I live it's about £18k compared to £24k nationally.

 

[moony]

Emergency call-out £150i wish

Repair (loft) ballcock £150

what?????

Kitchen installation plumbing connection £165

about right

 

[heinz57]

£25 per hour if your on your own and the call out charge if its more than 5 miles. Factor in your diesel costs per extra mile, best of luck mate.

 

[Bernie2]

A JIB Advanced grade Plumber working for a company would get about £12 per hour. You can work it out from there. An Advanced Plumber is an experienced person, who can if requested to do so by their employer, take on supervisory roles as well as run large jobs.

You can find all the pay rates on the JIB site. Working for yourself probably adds on about another £20 or so per week for insurances.

The cost of a van doesn't really count, as employed Plumbers usually have to find their own transport as well out of the £12 per hour. They also have to buy and find their own tools out of the £12 per hour. So there is no real difference between the two.

Updating training costs i.e ACS can be a conditional effort between the employer and employee and various methods are probably applied.
Usually it seems the company pays, but if you leave for any reason including getting the sack in the first twelve months after the test you pay it all back, after that it reduces by 50% in the next year and after that your free to leave.

You can also be asked, I think, to pay for the time off to take the tests yourself.

Basis to work from when charging for jobs?

 

[WHPES]

Remember that £12 per hour is a salaried rate, and of course the customer is charged considerably more. Working for yourself its not like working for a company starting at 8am and finishing at 4am every day getting paid for each hour in between. Your best way is to work out your productive hours per week and divide everything up.

 

[tamz]

What to charge is a hard one.
I may get a call to a job, say 10 miles away, a shower not working properly?? A couple of questions to the customer on the phone and i would 90% know the problem before i arrived. Stuff in van because i carry stock and job done in an hour + travel, charge £90 + vat labour + materials, 100% guaranteed fix (actual job on wednesday).
Now some may think £90+ vat (105.75) is expensive for 1 1/2 - 2 hrs time but is it really? What they also paid for was knowledge and experience.

Some one with less knowledge and experience may go look at the job, spend an hour or so figuring out what the problem is. Go to the merchants for the parts, back to job and fit, no joy! Spend a bit more time rethinking it. Back to the merchants. 1 hour to fix and done. Best part of a day spent on the job.
£25/hr x 6 hrs = £150 (probably no vat) + materials.

Which is the better value?
To those who don't know any better £150 + materials may seem a good price as you were there most of the day.
If i were to charge the same for an hours time they would think i was robbing them.
I'm not but i know what i'm doing!

Btw I don't have the time to spin a job out to make more money.

Bernie

I agree with some of what you say but obviously you have never worked for yourself (SC60?)
£12/hr + insurance (£12.50) get real.
The cost of a van doesn't count???????????
How many employers have you ever known to take the van costs off an employee?
Do you know what it costs to run a van? Well i'll tell you.
220/ month lease + approx £400 fuel and running costs (transit).
Holiday and welfare stamps, pension contributions (which as you should know are good) @7.5% of gross wages, employers liability, PPE etc etc etc. It all adds up. The prime cost for an employee, before margin is around £18/hr

Every employee supplies their own hand tools. Bigger plant and equipment is supplied by the employer.
When you were employed i suppose you ran around to all your jobs in your car (not just got yourself to a site) bought and serviced/maintained all plant and equipment etc??
If you did it would have been reimbursed at ?? per mile. How many times were you told something like Bernie you will need a 300 powerdrive or a chain cutter. You will be able to hire one for a reasonable cost from A plant!
Never. The cost is borne by the firm.
As for ACS, yes they may be conditional to an extent, but did your employer ever ask you to fork out the £1000 + for the tickets?
If i wanted to be a **** i could just pay the guys off when their tickets ran out (not suitably qualified) and start someone new who had them.

An employer HAS to make a decent profit above costs or you would not be in a job.

Not meaning to have a go but things are not quite as you see them

Btw. I'm 18 years as an employer. I'm not a millionaire, I don't have a villa in Spain. Still have a mortgage. Drive a 407. Have times where i make a (BIG) loss. Suffer immense stress and worry and think i'm getting too old for all this shyt but i go on because it is what i know best.
My dad (83) is/was a plumber who had 27 men at one time and he thinks like you at times. 1980! Must be a pensioner thing

 

[heinz57]

I would not work self employed for less than £25 an hour, i just would not turn a profit, i also charge 10% mark up on materials. When i think of what accountants charge, legal firms, garages (although i do 99% of my vehicle work myself given labour charges).

 

[Bernie2]

Hi! Tamz,

Not having a go.

But I think your a bit out of touch with the working environment.

Many employees now work on bonus rates or price's.

Materials delivered by merchants straight to job, even B.G does that for its subbies.

Companies usually get goods on credit so don't pay until job is finished.

Repair work is mostly transport time granted, but many Plumbers still seem to use their own vehicle even there. They can pay a bit added on to their normal car insurance to cover use in company time.

The arrangements for ACS can as I said vary.

As to the van, many employees do run their own van. I worked for a national company that charged me for their van, okay it was a nominal amount and I had private use of it, but they did charge.

Also you must know, if you can't get to the job by yourself, using your own transport you ain't usually got a job. So having transport is usually a must.

I have worked for companies, where all they have done is give me the job and I have been required to bill the customer myself. The hourly charges being many times what I was being paid.

So basically they made a packet for answering a phone. And yes I have worked for myself, although being fair it was for a short time.

Have you worked for a company Tamz or always been self employed?

Up there in Jock land, in the ship yards at least, Plumbers can be on 2 year contracts and then get the chop. If their ACS runs out while out of work, who is going to employ them without current qualification? So they have to pay their own fees.

Its not as easy being an employee like some may think.

I have worked for companies that wanted you to work 8 - 6 and be available for callouts through the night, holidays and weekends. Also writing out your own materials and sorting out your invoices and labour times.

All for the basic rate and that does not include all the Regs responsibility of being a gas installer and boiler repair operative.

The whole industry needs looking at to make it fair.

 

[tamz]

I know where you are coming from Bernie, but there are good and bad employers in every sector of the construction industry and the bigger ones are usually the worst.

I've been self employed for 18 years. The other 20 or so was spent working for different firms with work ranging from installs to renovations to sites to jobbing. Basically whoever was paying best. So i do see things from both sides.
Every job i had, the basic was paid at SNIPEF (JIB) rates but they all had a bonus scheme of some kind, or pricework. I was graded as a technician but only had 1 who would pay the rate. Had to drop to advanced rate with the rest.
I would never work for anyone doing a pool bonus because i refused to carry the lazy b......s. Stuck one jobbing one for about 3 months because like you, i had to ring the office to get the costs and collect the money, sometimes ridiculous amounts for what was done. Never did callouts because i refused to do that too.

The only time i had to provide my own transport was to get to the shop or on sitework to get to the site. Most times a van was supplied even then. The only thing you had to supply was hand tools. Everything else was provided.

Ever since i went SE i have tried to be fair with every employee. Some just rip the pysh though. That is something you learn really quick as an employer and it has to be addressed. That is where pricework comes in. Eg. send 2 men on a job that is priced for a day (can be done easily in that time) and they come back at the end of the day and say they have to go back the next day. Some jobs i've had i would have been better saying to the customer "thanks for phoning, i'll just send you a cheque for £100 and you get someone else to do the job".
Pricework if run fairly and realistically, doesn't lead to shoddy work but the way some operate it what do they expect.

It is not as easy being an employer as some may think

 

[Bernie2]

Hi Tamz

I must agree about the JIB Tech rate I was a tech but you can't get the work so you have to take what you can get.

In my area nearly all local firms seem to have dropped out of the JIB or where never in it. So getting a decent wage can be hard.

The smaller companies are over a barrel really if they want work continuity, its usually only the Housing associations who have that scale of work. And they employ professional people whose job it seems, is to keep prices down.

So the small companies are under pressure to keep prices down to compete with the large companies who can make money on economies of scale. The big ones can take on contracts at about £60 a house to cover a service and any repairs. But they take on thousands of houses at a time on the expectation that they may only get to do repairs in a few hundred and so make money on those they don't have to repair.

The small guy can't do that for many reasons. So he has to keep his cost base down while still supplying a good service, that usually means having to get his people to work as cheaply as possible.

I am not against that, because if the company doesn't prosper neither does the workforce. But sometimes the gap between what the company charges and what they pay the workforce, does seem exorbitant regardless of a companies overheads.