Survey Notes and Plot - We don't work for free !

Last week, I surveyed an oldish terraced house, with a view to a loft conversion, The survey its self took a few hours, no more, but the actual plot took about another 3 house, to produce three floor plans, a section and a couple of elevations.

The reason I tell you this, recently several students asked, what to charge for work, the answer is not easy, I have immediate costs that need to be met, so insurance, computer, telephone & Internet, plus upkeep of my CAD package, and general office running expenses,  paper ink and the like, that just keep coming, month after month, then the final cost is how long does it take me to draw it to a level ready for say planning or Regs.

Overall, I recon to at least a full day to draw, so say 7 hours, plus client time of half a day, so a total man hours of 10 hours, so the formula is :

hourly on cost + 10 hour

Now you need to sort out how much you want to earn in any year, and break it down to an hourly rate, oh and stay competitive. don't forget there may be 365 days in a year, but from this you need to remove holidays, and weekends, and at least one day a week for admin, believe me there is a lot of time spent running a small practice, that is not earning time.

So you can see it's not easy, and clients think you will be cheap because it's only a small extension,

Gary Meese asked me to add a link to the CIAT sheet on this, its a really good guide.

CIAT

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