I just got done with a commercial job and Ive been called into active duty working for a general. He wants me to travel about 3 hours away on this next job and that brings me to the question of motel and eats . Ive never done a lot of it , but I was wondering if the bid goes higher accordingly . I have noticed a lot this going on by other subs . They send complete crews in and feed and sleep them along with gas cards. I did a little math and discoverd a 12.00 hand now becomes an 18.50 dollar hand away from home. He wants more and I dont see thats possible as I told him I could replace him for 15 dollars locally. However I dont notice local hiring when they came here to work in my town. I could have made a living hiring help for them . I saw a hundred or more men working on this past project that all stayed in motels and visited our resturants.
I thought I might get some feed back from commercial subs on this subject. Or generals for that matter.
Tim Mooney
Replies
If the GC wants you on the job it should not be any less than your normal and customary charges for that type of job PLUS ALL EXPENSES.
Somebody can point you to the govt. per diem info site for possible guidelines, or you can just do your own negotiating. You can be sure that the GC will have ALL costs associated with the job figured into his total bid package. Don't be shy, run your business like a business.
Tim, ask the hired hand if he wants the raise or expenses, explain why he can't have both. Maybe he will take the money and then camp. What happend to the travel trailer idea? Sounds like a chance for Wife to do some travelling, other than that, what Ralph Said goes for me to.
Dan
You advocate letting you hired help stay in a travel trailer with you wife!!??
is the an enticement or a penalty??
post a pic of your wife so we can decide.
:)
Mr T
Do not try this at home!
I am an Experienced Professional!
Haha, well Mr T already got you about the wife hand thing.
I was planning on taking the camper and staying on a lake near the job. I was going to get my wife to pull BOAT DOWN THERE , if I can get all my tools on my truck needed for that job. Ive decided to leave help at home and not take him unless he offers . He can stay with me if he wants to come and Ill feed him fish ! haha.
I still havent bid it yet .
Tim Mooney
Well, I made more money on this last job working for him than Ive made in a long time . It is very good money . I just didnt want to blow it , but Im sure that every one has to figgure in those charges. I have been advised not to include them on top as expenses . Well, he knows what I worked for at home . This will be a case of going up on him after the first job was done. I could make it with out the increase , but thats not business is it ?
Tim Mooney
Can't add too much, except to say I'm confused.
travel expenses for an individual are not taxed if they do not exceed gov't per diem (see an account for sure). by increasing pay to cover them you are also increasing tax burden. (can deduct from income tax but better have receipts etc, but that doesn't account for SS etc)
also aren't travel expenses deductable from business taxes?
doesn't make sense that GC doesn't want them priced seperately.bobl Volo Non Voleo
Thanks for the imput , and thanks of raising the good question over being confused. I see the tax point clearly . Im asking how to go about it really . Read my answer to Paula , and please respond more if you can. I appreciate the help as Im a residential contractor and I havent crossed these bridges.
Thanks ,
Tim Mooney
Government Per Diem Site:
http://policyworks.gov/org/main/mt/homepage/mtt/perdiem/perd03d.html
Figure out what county you will be staying in. There are two different rates: Lodging Rate and the M&IE (Meals and Incidentals) Rate.
The way it works here is that you get 3/4 of a day on the days you travel. So, if you were leave on Monday and come back on Thursday, your total perdiem would be 3.5 days.
I can't believe it, I'm actually "the professional" on this one. Wow, what a feeling. :-)
Paula , thanks for responding . Im glad a professional responded. Thats the neat point to this site for pros as I see it. We get to take some home and thats pretty cool. No one knows it all and this is better than asking the few personal people we know about what little really one person would have the capacity to know . [Speaking respectively] There is a lot of shared knowledge here.
Ok, now that Ive made this question ; How is it handled in the bid ? I dont really know how long I will be there exactly and Im thinking he or she would have a problem paying a daily rate with out a cutt off in per deim days. I guess ignorantly with out looking at the site you provided I was figgureing expanding the bid amount to cover it.
How is it properly done ?
Thanks for the site and the imput.
Tim Mooney
just for refernece I'm retired ga'ment acquisition, evaluated lots of proposals/bids
is this a T&M, fixed price, cost + job?
for T&M and cost say what you are charging per day x number of expected days (not considering first last day stuff) and the final cost will be dependent on actual number of days.
if fixed price, how many work days are in your bid (PS don't forget weekends for per diem)? use that as the number of perdiem days (assumming 8 hr days) trying to keep some of this simple since I don't know how many people you will have there.
basicly how many days are you expecting to be on-site with a comfort factor. at $100-175/day/person perdiem you can lose a lot of profit and shirt quickly if you don't estimate well.
checking the irs site for travel expensises might help with how to deal with them
bobl Volo Non Voleo
Thanks for the information and insight.
I just visited a job site and talked to a contractor freind who does commercial work and travels all the time. He said that also it was a bid affair on top of my prime bid to estimate expenses . It is a fixed price job at this point , unless he asks for something different. I dont have hardly any experience in charging travel . In fact I have traveled before and didnt charge it because the money was good enough. He told me also I could lose my shirt if I estimated the time of the job wrong. He told me its often hard to calulate if Im held up or have to wait kind of thing. Seems his thoughts were that all the events in building is a chain of events that dont come off as planned most of the time. I also noticed that they had made mistakes oin the last job and had me fix or repair work I had already done. [ plumbers and electricians mostly] He also said that he had wondered many times why the company hadnt hired someone local to do the work to save the added expense of doing a job. Like I said before ; I could have made a good living just finding help for a commercial company here locally. My brother who is a retired commercial super told me that I would be better off to get on job site a week in advance and hire locally from run ads and empoyment security . If I do that I should be low bidder at 100.00 per man per day saved as its a rural part of the state.
Tim Mooney
Tim,
if'n i was to do a ga'ment estimate for travel this is the way I would do it
assumptions 10 days work, driving to and from location 200 mi one way (based on 3 hours away at 65mph)
200 x .365 (from Paula) + tolls cost each way
10 work days = 12 calander days 1/2 travel each way so 13 x perdiem rate for location
if i could think of any other costs associated with travel i would include them.
you mentioned maybe bring your wife and trailer and staying at a campground. I would not base my estimate on the cost of using the trailer park rate. as you know stuff happens.
i would do the above for each person. an argument can be made that if you used 2 people (u and helper) then both travel in same vehicle. good argument if you're a ga'ment negotiator, nickle and dime if you're commercial negotiater (IMO)
don't forget your overhead and profit on this cost. you will need to do paper work to keep IRS happy unless your tax guy gives you better advice on IRS paperwork, but u will spend time dealing with the matter. as i remember as an individual being payed at gov't rate with the paperwork i illed out i didn't have to worry about paying taxes on the travel money. this is something to talk to your tax guy about. maybe cause of the paperwork we had.
if u do decide to hire local for this job, don't forget to include your time and travel to find these people. don't know the size of the job, but could be, maybe not cheaper to bring your own folks. need to do the math etc including can you find someone to meet you standards from someone who will work for you, how long? bobl Volo Non Voleo
I thought I might explain something because you were concered about profits and treating it like business .
Right now as we speak this man has the work I make money at and he stands alone. I make the most money at painting or drywall, and he has both. What separates him from residential is he has volume . I have to stress "volume ". I dont want to get into what I have been making for him , but it is a very healthy living for me. The reason thats true is because Im tooled to do volume running lots of automated equipment for one thing and lots of tools to make it go. I can use temporary help just about as well because of the price difference. I taught a green hand to run boxes on this last job and he took to stilts easy. He had done a little finishing , but hadnt developed the speed I needed. Another hand mixed mud , set up , and sanded , plus ran a nail spotter. I guess with my instuction , and being there to push production , keep the two busy and coach if you will, I was able to get top production from low to medium pay. I guess thats what is about making money on top of help. As for me , I rolled for 12 hours a day and kept the knifes wet , ran the bazooka , and other things that took hand speed and experience. I look at it as a coaching job trying to man postions with the best players , but at the right pay. These are reasons I made good money , but it takes lots of volume that residential lacks.
I could really afford to pay my own expenses and come out better than working at home on residential . Actually about 3 times better . So think of a wage other people think you are worth and thriple it , or more for that matter . If you were used to making 25 for example and came to the house averageing 75 per hour , motel and eats would be trivial. At least Im looking at it that way staying in a camper , and eating grilled hamburgers , hot dogs and roasting marshmellows on the camp fire . I was hoping for a few fish suppers . Any way , 3 to 1 pay says a fellow could work one month and be off 2 and come out better when actually he would be working at something the other 2.
I plan on under cutting any competition with a lot of over head , and I think Im well enough thought of to demand the job any way from the past run on his other project. If I lose it , the money wont be there at all. I do think I should be compensated to some amount , but it should be very reasonable.
I decided today to take the GCs test and go completely commercial . Ive had a taste of the candy. When Ive got commercial customers , I might start raising the bar on expenses.
Thanks for your feed back.
Tim Mooney
Good Luck
and thanks for the added info.
you're the only one who knows what's best for you with all the factors taken into consideration.bobl Volo Non Voleo
I agree with you and Dan that it should be added in for several reasons . I happen to belive that it being up front with people pays and I see the tax advantage. Any way you look at it , others who have to travel must recover it some way and I dont think for a minute the man reveiwing bids is dumb. In fact I jump at the chance to say it will be a bean counter that does it for a living maybe with other job functions. This man and his wife are owners and have been in business for thirty years. To think one could get something over on them by disguising expenses in the bid would be foolish himself in my own opinion , but I have asked others for theirs and that seems to be the common believe of the post to run it as a line item . May be they will be pleased my line item will be small in that area. I think honesty should prevail and being reasonable. Again , I agree with whats been said , and its been a good thread for me .
Tim Mooney
Tim,
We are building a log home and there are a lot of builders who claim to be log home builders, but we knew we wanted a real log home builder. We found a great guy who was 75 miles away. They commuted each day, so we paid mileage 1-way travel time for them. It was a separate line item on his bills, and it was fair. We are DIY homeowners without a lot of $$ to spare, but we thought that was fair. Surely the GC you are working for will expect to pay your travel.
Okay, back to the per diem thing. I deal with folks who go on short trips. They go out for anywhere from 2-20 days or so. I talked to my brother who works for the National Parks. When he was out in the field, meaning, he lived in different parks for several months at a time on what was called extended temporary duty, they were given 55% of the govt daily per diem rate (from the website in my previous post). That would be 55% of the lodging + the M&IE rate. Current govt mileage is 36.5 cents/mile. Perhaps that would apply since you are planning to bring a trailer?
You can also get the perdiem rates from http://WWW.DFAS.mil. if you surf around it will let you look rates up by zipcode
Tim,
I'm a project manager for major retail chain. We deal with a small number of trusted national and regional contractors constructing our stores. Some contractors field only supervisors and hire all local subs, and others field small crews to do most of the non mechanical work. Either way, there is always a line item in the bids for travel expenses and is considered part of the cost of doing business.
These are legitimate costs incured by the traveling trades and I wouldn't want anyone on my jobs not compensated for them. We typicaly have a specific time line that we adhere to closely and therefore can realisticaly predict these costs. If the timeline is extended, then the per diem is pro-rated and added to the job cost as a change order. This is of course, dependant on the reason for the extended timeline.
Obviously the G.C. is interested in your specific talents and wants you on site or he would be hiring an untested local. If he wants you, he has probably figured travel costs in his bid and if he hasn't he is making a big mistake that will bite him in the butt.
Do a little research, come up with a fair number and ask for it without shame. I can tell you that good tradesmen who are willing to travel are not that common. Those that do it on a regular basis can tell you it is not an easy life. That is why they are more often than not, better compensated for their efforts.
Hope this helps,
Dan
Hello again Tim, sorry about the wife and hand comment, somehow that is not what I was thinking at all!! I just figured that she could tow the camper, while you hauled tools. After reading the other comments, the post above from the "other Dan" is right on!! I think that his last two comments are the best summation of the situation, the GC knows you and your work, and wants to repeat the experience. I don't think that he should expect you to travel for free, and you can bet that he doesn't!! Good Luck, and hope the fishing goes well too.
Dan PS you can lose money at home, so why travel to do it!
Money and Wanderlust.
That reply made a bunch of sense!
Thanks ,
Tim Mooney