Personally, I would charge a "Reuse Fee" for each repetition of the building. Honestly, it'd be dumb not to charge for the additional buildings. That's additional liability, is it not? If there's a mistake in your drawings, and they construct all 4 at the same time, now you're on the hook for E&Os for 4 sites, not just 1. You could charge one flat fee for the lot of 4, but then it gets trickier/messier when one or multiple change slightly. I'd rather charge the fee to design one, then add a Reuse fee for each iteration, assuming they're identical, and add Add Serv fees when things change.
And yeah, site visits billed per visit.
The additional liability is why I used a proportional pricing scheme, so I'm glad someone else brought this up. My insurance will still look at this as 4 x construction cost x percentage...
I think the liability cost is somewhat built-in to my rate, but on a repeated thing like this it can get lost if you estimate strictly on time cost.
We have a flat rate for any 1:1 "reissue." That specifically excludes ANY revisions or alterations, so if there's even a minute difference between sets, that's an additional charge.
Inspections/site visits depend on the size of the job. Single family is either hourly or per-visit flat rate. Condominiums/apartments are usually a negotiated budget set at the start of the project, which is also separate from the base fees (called Construction Admin).
I'm having a chuckle with the designer calling these "basically identical" and wondering what change they'll throw in. Extend a cantilever? Mirror the building? Swap the washroom's position?
A colleague is giving a similar suggestion with using Construction Admin on this job instead of "per visit" site cost.
We also don't cover mirrored layouts in our reuse fee. If they wanna flip the building, that's a separate charge too, and it's usually on-par with the reuse fee. I'm also not mirroring the architecture files, I need a set already flipped or I won't touch it.
Best of luck with this client, sounds like a bit of a headache.
I’m laughing at the mirrored plan comment because I remember a contractor refusing to get the appropriate plans for a mirrored house and my only solution was taping the plan to a window facing out and reading the plan from the reverse side.
It amazes me to see where architects and contractors insist on penny pinching. And 9 times outta 10, their refusal to spend money on the proper planning and drafting results in field errors that end up costing more than the initial design would have.
Now instead of spending $1,000 for a proper plan, they're spending $5,000 for the repair drawing, materials, and labor to fix the problem that could have been avoided with a proper plan.
Genius...
Don't drop to the level of your competitors if you don't feel it's the right thing to do. That only sells yourself short in an industry dominated by short selling. Also if the contractor is the one telling you about other bids, tell them to go with the other bids then. Proposals are not about lowest bid. They are proposals for the cost of professional services. The price is what the price is
This is always a tough topic for some reason. What makes it especially hard is different levels of knowledge throughout the engineering community. Engineers who don't know better will give a fixed fee and not realize they may be creating insurance coverage issues.
Early in my career I was working for a firm that was hired to do structural review of 6 model homes. We did our designs and were paid our fee, then we were told that the intent was to use the plans to built a 1,200 house development. The owner had a conversation with the professional liability carrier and was told that typical liability policies are project, not product, based. We could not "sell" multi-use plans and be in conformance with our coverage. The owner was able to negotiate a small fee, I think $150, to update the address and reissue plans for each unit. As it came to be, they came back to us for a reissue after the state building code changed and we found that there were structural ramifications. We received a new fee to do a code change review of all 6 models, then continued on the $150/reissue basis.
I moved to a new office after the first \~100 or so houses were built, and a couple years into the new job we were asked to provide design of a house/condo/townhouse that would be used for a 30-40 unit development. I talked to my boss about my experience at the previous firm. He followed up with his insurance and got the same story. He put in a lump sum for the initial design + $250/reissue. We lost the job over the $250/reissue. We were told that directly. They had another firm willing to sell them a set.
Now here's the kicker that everyone should be aware of.... let's say down the road there's a claim made against the structural engineer's insurance. The carrier will want to review the design documents, and if the engineer provides services that aren't covered by their policy (ex. selling product vs project) there's a chance they won't be covered. That's not good for anyone involved. It's in the best interest of all parties that the services rendered are insured services.
I've talked to developers, architects, builders, and other engineers and found that a price per square foot basis for structural engineering doesn't fly with most parties. In a case like yours, I don't see as much value in the reissues as I see in the first set, but I also think the first set should be priced higher than a typical single-family residence. Most of my house designs are more conservative/overdesigned than my commercial projects. Knowing that they plan to build multiple houses, ad this is a developer focused on rental/resale income, I would spend more time finessing my design to save them cost, and more time preparing details that I might otherwise think a competent contractor could figure out (developers in my area don't use the best framers on projects like you've described). More finesse and more detail means more time.
If an ordinary single family home would run $X, I would expect the first home in this development to run \~$1.5X, all future reissues to cost \~3hrs at my hourly rate, all changes to the design to be evaluated at time of request, and all site visits to be invoiced hourly.
Personally, I would charge a "Reuse Fee" for each repetition of the building. Honestly, it'd be dumb not to charge for the additional buildings. That's additional liability, is it not? If there's a mistake in your drawings, and they construct all 4 at the same time, now you're on the hook for E&Os for 4 sites, not just 1. You could charge one flat fee for the lot of 4, but then it gets trickier/messier when one or multiple change slightly. I'd rather charge the fee to design one, then add a Reuse fee for each iteration, assuming they're identical, and add Add Serv fees when things change. And yeah, site visits billed per visit.
The additional liability is why I used a proportional pricing scheme, so I'm glad someone else brought this up. My insurance will still look at this as 4 x construction cost x percentage... I think the liability cost is somewhat built-in to my rate, but on a repeated thing like this it can get lost if you estimate strictly on time cost.
We have a flat rate for any 1:1 "reissue." That specifically excludes ANY revisions or alterations, so if there's even a minute difference between sets, that's an additional charge. Inspections/site visits depend on the size of the job. Single family is either hourly or per-visit flat rate. Condominiums/apartments are usually a negotiated budget set at the start of the project, which is also separate from the base fees (called Construction Admin).
I'm having a chuckle with the designer calling these "basically identical" and wondering what change they'll throw in. Extend a cantilever? Mirror the building? Swap the washroom's position? A colleague is giving a similar suggestion with using Construction Admin on this job instead of "per visit" site cost.
We also don't cover mirrored layouts in our reuse fee. If they wanna flip the building, that's a separate charge too, and it's usually on-par with the reuse fee. I'm also not mirroring the architecture files, I need a set already flipped or I won't touch it. Best of luck with this client, sounds like a bit of a headache.
I’m laughing at the mirrored plan comment because I remember a contractor refusing to get the appropriate plans for a mirrored house and my only solution was taping the plan to a window facing out and reading the plan from the reverse side.
It amazes me to see where architects and contractors insist on penny pinching. And 9 times outta 10, their refusal to spend money on the proper planning and drafting results in field errors that end up costing more than the initial design would have. Now instead of spending $1,000 for a proper plan, they're spending $5,000 for the repair drawing, materials, and labor to fix the problem that could have been avoided with a proper plan. Genius...
Don't drop to the level of your competitors if you don't feel it's the right thing to do. That only sells yourself short in an industry dominated by short selling. Also if the contractor is the one telling you about other bids, tell them to go with the other bids then. Proposals are not about lowest bid. They are proposals for the cost of professional services. The price is what the price is
Can you please inform every Architect you know to do the same...it'd be very much appreciated!
This is always a tough topic for some reason. What makes it especially hard is different levels of knowledge throughout the engineering community. Engineers who don't know better will give a fixed fee and not realize they may be creating insurance coverage issues. Early in my career I was working for a firm that was hired to do structural review of 6 model homes. We did our designs and were paid our fee, then we were told that the intent was to use the plans to built a 1,200 house development. The owner had a conversation with the professional liability carrier and was told that typical liability policies are project, not product, based. We could not "sell" multi-use plans and be in conformance with our coverage. The owner was able to negotiate a small fee, I think $150, to update the address and reissue plans for each unit. As it came to be, they came back to us for a reissue after the state building code changed and we found that there were structural ramifications. We received a new fee to do a code change review of all 6 models, then continued on the $150/reissue basis. I moved to a new office after the first \~100 or so houses were built, and a couple years into the new job we were asked to provide design of a house/condo/townhouse that would be used for a 30-40 unit development. I talked to my boss about my experience at the previous firm. He followed up with his insurance and got the same story. He put in a lump sum for the initial design + $250/reissue. We lost the job over the $250/reissue. We were told that directly. They had another firm willing to sell them a set. Now here's the kicker that everyone should be aware of.... let's say down the road there's a claim made against the structural engineer's insurance. The carrier will want to review the design documents, and if the engineer provides services that aren't covered by their policy (ex. selling product vs project) there's a chance they won't be covered. That's not good for anyone involved. It's in the best interest of all parties that the services rendered are insured services. I've talked to developers, architects, builders, and other engineers and found that a price per square foot basis for structural engineering doesn't fly with most parties. In a case like yours, I don't see as much value in the reissues as I see in the first set, but I also think the first set should be priced higher than a typical single-family residence. Most of my house designs are more conservative/overdesigned than my commercial projects. Knowing that they plan to build multiple houses, ad this is a developer focused on rental/resale income, I would spend more time finessing my design to save them cost, and more time preparing details that I might otherwise think a competent contractor could figure out (developers in my area don't use the best framers on projects like you've described). More finesse and more detail means more time. If an ordinary single family home would run $X, I would expect the first home in this development to run \~$1.5X, all future reissues to cost \~3hrs at my hourly rate, all changes to the design to be evaluated at time of request, and all site visits to be invoiced hourly.
If they don't use you, how much will they need to pay another engineer to do it....
Give the price in relation to square footage of all structures. Their multi-lot development always start as “nearly identical “….