Price for Electrical work

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, but one and his mate might.

[Owain]

That's only £37 an hour, assuming an 8-hour day. Which of course does not take into account -

- most electricians can't bill 8 hours a day, 5 days a week

- several weeks holiday a year

- time lost due to illness or accident

- time lost due to delayed other works on a project

- time lost going to the wholesalers for materials

- someone has to be paid (even if it's the opportunity cost of the wife staying at home) to answer the phone and take messages

- someone has to be paid (even if ditto) to make up the bills, chase payments, pay suppliers accounts, keep the books, send in the tax returns

- the van, telephone line, any advertising, has to be paid for every week regardless of work done

- so does the public liability insurance, employee insurance if he has a mate, national insurance contributions, insurance on the van, tools and materials

- so does the pension, and if the wife isn't working, so does her pension

An employed electrician or plumber is probably on about £16 an hour gross + bonuses. After all the business expenses above are taking into account, the self-employed sparkie is probably on no more, possibly less.

Owain

[Rob Convery]

Your not too hot on the old maths are we - The price difference is £300/£350 so lets say £150 a day which is not too bad for some cash in hand jobs in my eyes

[Dave Plowman (News)]

If they're a one man band and travel for free and really graft in an expensive area to live, then not totally unreasonable for a 10 hour working day. Of course if they start at 10 and finish at 4 after two hours for lunch, its a different matter.

That's why the true facts are needed.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Define a day. My normal day means arriving ready for work at 0800 and leaving at 1900. If a workman wants 10:00 - 16:00 as their working day - adjust the calculation.

[EricP]

Only you can say, since only you know the work involved.

We have established that the sundries are of no consequence, say £100 maximum, so that leaves £1800 for the work.

If he is in and out, in two days, even over a weekend, that's £900 per day. I would consider that a tad excessive, even for central london.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Hmm. I'm a self employed sound engineer working in the 'glamour' world of TV. And none I know of that I work with on the production crew - including the director - get 37 quid an hour, labour only. And we all have the same expenses as above as self employed.

Of course if you bring tools and transport into the equation I'm willing to think that your figures are more meaningful. I charge extra for those. But the sort of kit I'd need for even a minor TV shoot will cost about

20,000 quid without vehicle.

[John Rumm]

You would probably find a slightly lower price by shopping around, but all in all it sounds fair enough to me - especially if it includes the making good after.

Supplimentary question for any sparks out there... what are you paying for insurance these days?

[larry]

this year for £5M it was £127.71 then changed to a policy covering me for certification indemnity and that increased the premium to £282.91, and another £290ish to work on rail stations.

Loz

[tony sayer]

Its sometimes a job finding anyone to work even around here, let alone what they'll charge;(...

[John White]

Being in Manchester I'm not too sure on prices in the East Midlands, and you really need to see a job like this before you can price it properly.

That said I would have quoted about £400 for changing the consumer unit, and £900 - £1000 for the rest, depending on how much additional work was involved.

So £1900 sounds a little high, but then again I've not seen what's involved.

John

[John Rumm]

Does that include any professional indemnity cover, or just PL, and EL etc? What about cover for tools etc?

[Franko]

Does £400 for the consumer unit include supplying the cu?

[John White]

Yes. That is typically what we would charge for supplying and fitting a 10 way split-load consumer unit, including MCBs.

John

[larry]

John

el = £10,000,000 temp. employees pl =£5,000,000 pa= £20,000 js=covered pi is covered cant find the figure at the moment but covers certification errors.

no tools covered and no stock. cost and conditions made it expensive and unlikely that a payment would ever be made.

loz

[RichardS]

good lord - excluding the new certification indemnity, was the cover pretty much equivalent to the previous policy?

150% increase in premium is quite steep (not saying that it isn't the going rate, though. it's not something I've got experience in).

[larry]

added in the personal accident as well but more or less the same policy.

Loz

[John Rumm]

That sounds quite good for the money. Must admit I have never been able to work out how the insurers price these things.

IIRC we spend about 650 a year for our insurance, which includes similar levels of cover (although no PA). It also has 500K PI, and 20K business equipment "at home". That covers us for all software engineering activities and most IT related ones. When we enquired about coverage for network wiring (i.e. drilling the occasional hole, or chasing a wall, mounting a wall port etc), they wanted to add thousands to the premium! Given that the bulk of the time spent trading as a sparks must involve do exactly those things, it seems hard to work out how they justify the price they quoted us is that is what they are charging for the same level of cover on its own.

[larry]

didn't bother with the network element, do it and be damned. for how much data cabling i do a year i'd rather not spend more on insurance than the work is worth.

Loz

[Andy Hall]

It's all done by actuaries. These are people that found accountancy too exciting.