I’ve been asked by a friend to help out with a house he’s building. He’s asked for framing services– which include installation of windows, exterior doors, and interior pre-fab stairs– and insists on paying fair market value for my assistance. Not being familiar with the current piece rate for his area, I was wondering if someone would be willing to enlighten me on the subject. His project is situated near Boonton NJ. Understanding full well that without actually sitting down with the plans no definitive figure could be given. I would like, however, a “ball park figure” and then I can work out the finer details with him.
His project consists of a two story L-shaped structure, with 8′ walls (2×6 exterior), and a 8/12 stick hip and gable roof with one valley. There are four 7′ wide dormers, four skylights, and a vaulted barrel entrance.
Replies
probably somewhere between $4 and $5 a square foot.
"I've been asked by a friend to help out with a house he's building."
What does HELP OUT mean.
Is he giving you a set of plans and say call me when the frame it up.
Or is he buying all the materials, doing some of the work and needing an extra hand.
Or is he buying all the materials, doing all of the work, but needs an hour or two of "guidance" from time to time.
Or some other combination.
What is your "expense" in doing this and risks.
He will be giving me a set of plans.
His intentions are to assist my "crew" and I providing some semblance of a "helper's" level of involvement.
While he plans to purchase the materials, I will be providing the skilled labor force to put the house up.
My expenses include namely my resources; time, equipment, and labor force.
Risks, my crews time.
Our frames run between 6 and 11/sq ft.
In that area with that many dormers, I'm thinking the higher number. I was a young man when I saw framing for less than six.
but I've never worked in jersey.
Excellence is its own reward!
WOW! thats alot of money. Ive never heard of framing over $6. We are talking labor only I assume? I framed in NY in 2000, very simple duplexs going for a hair under $3. Now in Virginia Beach framing upper end homes, cut, hips and valleys from hell for around $5. Im packing my bags now though.
it's a time, region, and competition thing. There was a thread last summer about this same thing. Guys in competition with imported labor are hurting and priced low.
The other thing is whether it includes square and plumb or just erected. There's a lot of crap nailed together just to get it up and take the money, which forces a lot of other mediocre framers to drop their prices.
I'm not a framer, but do my own framing and that is mostly remodel woprk so there is time spent in tie-ins.
But I still don't hear about anybody willing to take a contract for less than six. - labour only, but equiptment included.
Excellence is its own reward!
Ronald6756, if I might ask why are you're "packing [your] bags now"? Was it business and/or profit related? I'm actually doing some real research regarding both the shrinking labor pool of new entries into the building and remodeling industries and the why the older more experienced generation is leaving for a paper I'm working on.
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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
I'm just outside of Boston and Piffin's ballpark sounds pretty darn close to mine. I won't touch anything under six...and lately I haven't had to, been getting seven for basics prepped for vinyl. I start estimates at a sqft number and tack on extras depending on the exterior trim out, housewrap, skylights, dormers, flying rakes, roof complication etc.
The biggest factor in my estimates is the roof. I love cutting roofs and in my area there doesn't seem to be alot of framers who want to deal with 'em. Most guys around here want to get in and out, make their money blasting out easy houses. I'll take a well paying "head scratcher" of a roof any day.
Long winded way of stating that I'm with Piffin on the numbers....sorry!
Don't have a clear enough picture of what the original poster's job is going to be on his upcoming frame to be of any help... he's bringing his own crew, tools etc but is only there for assistance? I don't get it.
My experiences with guys that quote SF pricing, or some other kind of unit, for that matter, have been disappointing.
Generally, it indicates that they took little or no time looking at the plans and specs in the RFQ package that I used the time and money to send them. If they get the job from me, they are likely to come in at job time and complain about all the stuff they didn't realize was in the scope, and cry for more money.
Where I have built, in the midwest and now here in the northeast, a framing sub erects the house structure, and installs all windows and exterior doors, plus doing all roofing, including any rake and fascia that must preceed roof edge closure. Drop ceilings, soffits, and miscellany like that, are included.
Numbers like 5, 6, and even 7 really wake me up, and I cannot believe the numbers lower than 5. If you want to frame for me up here, and only charge, say, 7, I will send beer-stocked limos for your crew, and put 'em up at a four star hotel for the duration of the job.
Where are you at......sir?
Sometimes guys quoting sq ft only menas that they are responding to the market and don't know how to estimate or sometimes it can mean they are the best at what they do.
i.e.
When roofing sub, I could quote at sq pricing after asking a few questions to apply my modyers to base price without seeing the job on new work. And I could make money on it.
This was because that was all I did, and I could constantly refine my pricing methods. I knew my work and my locale`. Specialists can do it that way. Like deisel said, he adds for dormers and cuts on roof, etc. He knows what it will take and can price accordingly.
I'm agreeing with every one else about mixing the crew with the owner. That will just slow things down. Every crew that knows what they are doing ( maybe that doesn't apply in this example because someone who doesn't do enough of it to be able to price it doesn't have a crew trained out to efficiency anyway) has a method and a process that flows like water going downhill. You don't want to get in the way!
I remember when I first moved to the island, I was working for another outfit and they put me in as lead man building a house. I took the plans home and next morning came in with a cut list of so many studs, so many jacks, so many cripples of this and that size, you nail this many corners to gether, you make up ten headers this size, and five that size, etc.
Crew had never cut more than five or six studs at one time so they couldn't conceive of taking such chances. I convinced them to go along and humour me while I started layouts on plates. Two days later, they were amazed that they had framed all the walls up. They started to trust me then as we built the floor system for upper level.
That was good because their mouths reall fell open when they learned how to frame a gable end wall with it laying on the deck and we were starting to set rafters a couple days later. Their normal system was to spend a couple of days figuring how to get a ridge in the right place, frame rafters to it, and then piece in the end walls under the rafters, one at a time.
I'd a gone crazy slowing down that much!
Point is that every one has their methods. Even tho mine was faster, I still had to slow down and take ten every now and then to convince them to come down the same trail I was on. Everyone has to be going the same way and someone has to be leading. Having everyone helping everyone else with no leader is a sure way to have mistakes, backups and maybe accidents....
Excellence is its own reward!
Piffen—"Sometimes guys quoting sq ft only menas that they are responding to the market and don't know how to estimate..."
Sometimes? That's 90 to 95 % of the from what I've seen.
...or sometimes it can mean they are the best at what they do."
They're the other 5% and they'll say something like 8 or 9 when the market says 5 or 6 and they'll get it. I do that at times with some of our projects. Years of experience will tell me the project will be around X amount of dollars but I'll just throw out a WWITTGMOOBTDTP* price of Y or Z and a lot of times I'll get it but I can only do that because I have a real good experiential sense of what it will cost based on the experience of having really figured it out several times and having job costed them effectively after completion too. (*-What Will It Take To Get Me Out Of Bed In the Morning To Do This Project).
I think most neophyte contractors hear the SF price banter and then think okay I can charge $5 dollars a square foot or whatever and then and just figure they can make money that way and then when a bad case of the real ratios of the different assembly costs hits them on a project it drives them under. Poor Estimating and Job Costing is one of the top ten reasons for contractor failure according to the Journal of Construction Accounting & Taxation.
Is it any wonder that building and remodeling contractors have the highest failure rate among new businesses?
I don't know, I think trading around Square Foot price information like often happens here online only further encourages bad business practices and hurts us all as a group in the long run. It certainly helps put a cap or limitiations on what the real good framers can make since the neophyte's usally give that unrealistically low price that the real pros have to compete against.
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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
Sorry, but I'm confused...
If not with square footage, then where would I start my bid? I start with a base number determined according to square footage, anywhere from $7 to $12 depending on the roof and/or tie in to existing structures vs new construction. Then after closely examining the prints I'll tack on for what I call extras, options if you will. Things in this category would include the level of detail in soffit, fascia, frieze, water table, corner boards, porches and decks then get tacked on, flying rakes at a per foot rate, trey (sp?) ceilings, cathedral ceilings, stud height, transoms, and flush framing. Would this put me in your 95% or 5% category?
Where you referring to guys who get a phone call about a "2500 sqft house" and say, "I'll be there Monday for $15,000"?
Dieselpig, regarding "Sorry, but I'm confused...
If not with square footage, then where would I start my bid?" once before when I got in on this SF estimating thing there was some misunderstanding of just what I was really talking about. Just a little over a year ago a fellow was asking for SF pricing information for a deck project he was looking at in a discussion called s.f deck price I contacted Bob Pro-Dek as asked for him to to jump in and help out with it. After reading my comments regarding my standard mantra that says:"There is no such thing a good, fair, or accurate Square Foot Price for estimating. At the very best a price based on square footage is nothing more than a WAG or SWAG ( Wild Assed Guess or Sophisticated Wild Assed Guess). Square Foot Estimates are inaccurate, undependable, and dangerous to use."
Bob responded back then saying:
While his unit quantities were calculated in measurements of Square Feet what he was really doing was "Systems Estimating" or "Unit Price Estimating" and what he was doing was very good practice and exactly what I was advocating so maybe the misunderstanding now is the same as it was back then, one of semantics and definitions?
When you said in your post "I start estimates at a sqft number and tack on extras depending on the exterior trim out, housewrap, skylights, dormers, flying rakes, roof complication etc." I think that's better practice than most of the framers who I see that use just a pure SF figure but it may not be as accurate as it could or should be. The fellow I've been working with this spring on honing his estimating did things that way so he wasn't doing poorly at all but we found after breaking up that base SF number into just a few different assemblies things got much better and more on target.
We had first met on a project three years that he told me at the time that he didn't make any money on. That was because the house was full of walls and different angles and heights. It almost seemed as though every room in the house was at a different elevation. Indeed as you entered the house through the main entrance you could step down two steps into the living room, walk through a short hall down one step into the kitchen, or up one step into the library etc. If you went into the basement there were probably eight to twelve columns holding up beams and the framing on the floors for the rooms above was different in sizing span and direction for virtually every room above. How can a single Square Foot price cover that kind of variety? It can't.
Some framers might say that they would just add a percentage to account for that cutting up but how do you know how much of a percentage to add? 5%, 10%, 50%. What determines that? A framer with 25 years of experience might be able to make a decent guess at it but one with only 10 years may not. It sounds to me like the method your describing that you use is one where you taking a pure Square Foot Estimate and then tweaking it for variations.("I start estimates at a sqft number and tack on extras depending on the exterior trim out, housewrap, skylights, dormers, flying rakes, roof complication etc.") It also sounds to me like like your probably tweaking it based primarily on your own experience and not on any real cost based analysis which is fine if you been doing it for a long time and have succeeded at it but the fact of the matter is that 4 out 5 contractors fail at it and don't succeed beyond five years.
I would prefer what might be looked at as a more "scientific" approach. With the framer I'm working with we've broken up the estimating into these groups all considered separately.
Posts
Each
Beams
LF
Post
Each
Floor Framing System
(price varies according to joist type, sizing & spacing)
SF
Sub Floor Surfacing
(price varies according to material, & sizing)
SF
Exterior Wall Systems (price varies according to materials, sizing, and height)
LF
Exterior Wall Systems (price varies according to materials, sizing, and height)
LF (or possibly SF of surface)
Opening ( as in headers
Per Opening or LF of Opening
Ceiling Framing System
(price varies according to joist type, sizing & spacing)
SF
Roof Framing Systems (price varies according to materials, sizing, height, pitch, and style (i.e. gable truss hip gambrel etc.))
SF
Dormers
LF (of width)
Housewrap
SF
Window & Door Installation
Each
Trim
LF
Special materials handling, temporary storage & protection,
special tools equipment, temporary construction, and scaffolding
Varies
Misc (blocking, firestops, special connectors, etc.)
Varies
Generally speaking those divisions also breakdown into the sequence of contiguous activities performed so it's pretty easy to easy to record information like installation of an 1800 sf area of 12" Open Web Joists 16" OC took 3 carpenters 1.5 days to assemble (36 labor hours) and then 22 hours to sheath in 5/8 CDX (a 3 carpenter crew for 7.33 hours).
When you said "The biggest factor in my estimates is the roof. I love cutting roofs and in my area there doesn't seem to be alot of framers who want to deal with 'em. Most guys around here want to get in and out, make their money blasting out easy houses. I'll take a well paying "head scratcher" of a roof any day. " aren't we really saying that those "Most guys around here" are dodging those project ether because they can't figure out how to cost and price them or don't want to take on that risk? I do hope you exploiting that opportunity and advantage and charging for it accordingly.
The other thing that occurs to me is that if a framer is basing their pricing on a pure Square Foot Estimate number just how do you begin to estimate remodeling projects where the not even all of the systems I mentioned above will necessarily part of the project. You could easily have a project with no exterior wall or roof framing so what happens to that pure Square Foot Estimate number then?
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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
Wow, thanks for taking the time to put together such a well thought out informative response. I appreciate you giving me your time. It sounds like a great system, one that is far closer to "fail proof" than my own. Unfortunately I think most of us only change our estimating systems when we hit that one in five hundred project and it kills us! To be entirely honest, I think I would have a tough time breaking down my labor that accurately...this would simply be attributed to a lack of long term experience in estimating. Many times I do simply trust my gut, when I finish an estimate and look over the plans again I'll sometimes get the feeling that I'm too low or high and adjust "accordingly"...seat of the pants stuff. Thus far I guess I've been lucky and have done well while staying busy. Sometimes I wish there was a school for this stuff...where does one learn the "art" of estimating other than through trial and error? I did go to the "Job Cost and Estimating" seminar at JLC Live this past April and found it very infomative, but it was an awful lot of information in about and hour and a half. It was taught by one of two brothers who own a successful remodeling company in Conn I believe and their system sounds very similar to yours.
I'm relatively young, 30, and like most have much more experience in my trade than in business dealings. I learned much of what I know now about framing through trial and error, and to some degree that is my approach in business. I don't think it's the best approach, and I won't even say it's a good idea, but at this moment, it's all I know! You do what you know and you do what you've learned....you know? It's unfortunate that some of us will fail in the process of "learning" and just trying to do the right thing. I think I will begin to watch my frames even closer and try to increase my accuracy BEFORE I get smoked or blind-sided. I would love to have a system as accurate as yours, however, I think it will be something that I will have to earn and not just learn.... T-I-M-E =Things I Must Earn.
Again, thanks for your considerate post. Brian
Brian if it's any consolation reading your other posts here in other discussions online I had figured you to be a little bit older and certainly smarter than your giving yourself credit for. "To be entirely honest, I think I would have a tough time breaking down my labor that accurately.." Nah I don't know it really not that hard once you get down to it and think about it. The guy I've been describing that I'm working with on his framing estimating is just in his early thirties and he's had no problems picking it up and were working thorough just a little bit of language barrier with it too. I actually seriously began getting seriously interested in estimating and project management (CPM & PERT) just around the time I was 26 or 27 I think (I'm 47 now, wow how time flies when your having fun).
There's maybe just a little bit of trial and error picking up systems estimating but if you do try to think about it and explore it you'll still have your "horse sense" and hunches to fall back on and back you up as a double check to a systems or unit cost estimate.
Listen I created a simplified (rough carpentry only) version of what I already was calling my Simplified Estimating Worksheet and if you like to try it out when I get it cleaned up and publish the newer version I'd be glad to have you help check it out and tell me what you think of it. The other day in another discussion here I posted some GIF screen shots of what it looks like and I'll post then again here.
An Estimate Sheet 5 sec @56kbps
The Cost Book - Division Categories 3 sec @56kbps
The Cost Book - Sub-Division View 3 sec @56kbps
The Cost Book - Item Selection View 3 sec @56kbps
Control Panel Preferences View 5 sec @56kbps
When I posted them the other week I thought I would have finished that newer version of the software by now but I got called out of town for a few days so that schedule got trashed. I working on it again this week though so unless I have to go back up to Hartford again I should have it by the end of the week and I'll even talk to my friend Jan (John) to see if he can give me a sample framing project he's used it for.
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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
Excellent stuff there Jerrald. That would be great if your friend could come up with an example like that. Once again thanks for your help. You are a tribute to this community and I appreciate your encouragement.
Brian
Jerrald, you've been ignoring your own Paradigm forum for waaaaay too long, how about doing something there for those of us that are AVIDLY following your discourse on scheduling/managment techniques? HUH?!?!? How 'bout it? Please???
SamT
Sleepless in Columbia. Diurnal rhythm? What songs did they do?
Thanks Sam but I'm really not ignoring it at all. Just no one right now is asking questions or talking. Reading the logs I can tell people are visting it and reading the stuff but not saying anything (they're lurking). It's still ramping up. I've also been doing a bit of long distance commuting between Katonah NY and East Windsor CT lately so that's taken up a lot of my time. I'm staying local this week so I plan to update some of the discussions there with some of what I picked up and learned these past few weeks especially regarding assigning costs to the project buffer which I know you were interested in. — http://www.paradigm-360.com/ProjectManagementForum
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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
Cool. Thanks.
Actually I am interested in the whole concept, cuz fiding an hours time is like finding a 50lb box of nails the forsetters left behind...money in MY bank.
SamT
Sleepless in Columbia. Diurnal rhythm? What songs did they do?
Edited 6/24/2003 10:12:04 PM ET by SamT
You are right about that which is why I gave out such a wide range, 6-11.
Excellence is its own reward!
Offer to work T&M. Give him the rates of the different positions an your crew (which includes tools and equipment) and a rough estimate of where you think the costs might fall.
There are too many unknowns, especially if he wants to help. Sometimes there is more time babysitting the "helper" than you get out of him. If the costs end up higher than anticipated, be prepared to understand and explain why, but you won't be out the money.
Usually when I see these discussions regarding Framing Pricing by the Square Foot I tag them setting the Rate My Interest option to High but I generally stay out of them. We specialize in Architectural Woodwork and don't really do much framing at all beyond some of the stuff we need to do for our stair building efforts and I personally haven't framed in years. However I think the pricing methodology that it seems 90% of the framers use is nuts. You just can't possibly produce accurate estimates based on the square foot footprint of a project.
In another discussion here back in February regarding interior trim bid I made a post saying the key to estimating trim is producing an accurate project takeoff and I believe that is also true for framing and since I began working with a few framing subs this spring on honing their estimating efforts I think that is especially important for them since their market is so competitive, fungible, and commodity like. In other words with their narrower margins I think understanding the costs associated with particular activities and accurately predicting them is even more important to running and profitable and survivable business.
I wrote a short paper called The Hidden Danger of Square Foot Estimating a while back and while the example I used to show why SF estimating can be so dangerous was just a simple deck the logic and relationships hold true for larger and more complex projects. While framing a house is not that complex* in terms of the number of activities it is more complex than the simple deck example I used and as complexity (the number of differing activities) rises the potential for error increases too.
If I was a Framing Contractor (and I am considering get back into it business wise although not hands-on) I would estimate my projects using Systems (or Assemblies) Estimating or Unit Price Estimating. It's very easy to be 15% to 20% off on what you really should be charging based on SF estimating and that's way to big a business risk to be taking in my estimation.
Another thing that sticks out when I hear Square Foot prices for framing being quoted it usually $5 per square foot or $6 per square foot and to the best of my recollection I never or rarely hear prices like $5.75 per square foot or $6.35 per square foot. When I hear that that tells me that the numbers are arbitrary and not really based on any real computations and that's a clear signal that they are negotiable! I can think of a few builders that I know that pick up on that like they're sharks and will talk you down from a $6 per square foot to $5.75 getting you to "sharpen your pencil on this job". It's much harder if not impossible to argue down a detailed assembly or unit price list. From a pure negotiation point of view giving quotations based on Square Foot estimates is just real bad strategy.
And even if Systems Estimating or Unit Price Estimating loses you some jobs to other framers who use Square Foot Estimating aren't you better off that way rather than doing work that losing or costing you money out of your own pocket?
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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
MachMaster, since you don't have much experience with this you might want to consider hiring a professional estimator to help you out on this especially when it could mean saving yourself from a potential 15% to 20% error. The project your describing sounds pretty simple too me outside of the barrel vault entrance (you didn't say how big it was) and I be glad to help you out but I'm not familiar with your area. Try contacting Bob Kovac's since he's Jersey based. He could knock it off for you very easily.
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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
boonton.... i new a guy who went to newton. had to go to court there.