How do you change the bulbs on these ceiling lights

[BobAJob]

13 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Don't forget on a small job like this, it will take the electrician much longer to look at the job, see what's needed, and then go and get the parts, than it will to actually do the job.

 

If he just charges you 1 hour labour, he will be losing out big time and might as well not bothered doing the job.

Perhaps.

 

But he is ordering and collecting parts for all his jobs in one go not just collecting my parts. 

 

That's why I am happy to accept a bit of markup on the parts and a profit has to be made.  Even if I allow £150 to account for the quoting, research, ordering and collecting process it still seems pretty high for installation. We all got to make a profit and I have no problem with that. 

 

He spent 10 minutes at the property measuring the hole in the ceiling and taking photos of existing lights with his phone.  I gave him the spec of bulb (GU10, 120 degree, cool white, max power the fittings will take). 

Edited December 3, 2022 by BobAJob

[dpmiller]

I guess I don't understand why you haven't just done it yourself if you know all about how to do it?

[Radian]

There is nothing to prevent anyone from changing a light fitting, other than their own willingness to take the time and risk (which depends on their knowledge and skill level). If unwilling then the alternative is to contract out the job and accept that you will not be able to question the cost. You can, of course, decline and get another quote.

[BobAJob]

1 hour ago, Radian said:

There is nothing to prevent anyone from changing a light fitting, other than their own willingness to take the time and risk (which depends on their knowledge and skill level). If unwilling then the alternative is to contract out the job and accept that you will not be able to question the cost. You can, of course, decline and get another quote.

You can and should always question the cost. I did and had the job done by another trader. 

 

On 03/10/2022 at 21:38, ProDave said:

Sadly a lot of light fittings recently are throw away items.  Care to post a picture?

 

Edited December 3, 2022 by BobAJob

[BobAJob]

1 hour ago, dpmiller said:

I guess I don't understand why you haven't just done it yourself if you know all about how to do it?

Because I wanted an electrician to do it. I have a degree in microelectronics, so I am comfortable with 5 volts. 

[Radian]

37 minutes ago, BobAJob said:

You can and should always question the cost. I did and had the job done by another trader. 

 

 

By question the cost, I mean challenge the contractor to itemise everything thus revealing the margin being made. This comes up quite often. It's not unreasonable to google the price of things to get a ballpark idea of the costs involved but unfortunately it tends to miss the bigger picture of what's involved.

 

37 minutes ago, BobAJob said:

Because I wanted an electrician to do it. I have a degree in microelectronics, so I am comfortable with 5 volts. 

 

You have plenty of transferrable skills then. Are you never tempted to do anything that interfaces with 240VAC? Most of my electronics does at some point. I sometimes even reference my logic supplies to the mains and use resistive dividers to sample the mains with an A/D ☠️

[BobAJob]

15 minutes ago, Radian said:

 

By question the cost, I mean challenge the contractor to itemise everything thus revealing the margin being made. This comes up quite often. It's not unreasonable to google the price of things to get a ballpark idea of the costs involved but unfortunately it tends to miss the bigger picture of what's involved.

 

 

You have plenty of transferrable skills then. Are you never tempted to do anything that interfaces with 240VAC? Most of my electronics does at some point. I sometimes even reference my logic supplies to the mains and use resistive dividers to sample the mains with an A/D ☠️

I don't expect an itemisation of every cost, but a split out of parts cost from installation cost is pretty essential. Bundling them together means you can't compare and I suspect the traders know this, but try it on.  I don't expect to pay 'cost' for the parts as I accept that there are other costs in getting them and it's pretty standard to expect to pay a bit more than cost for them. I like a bit of transparency in my dealings with people, then there are no surprises and everyone is happy. 

 

Personally, I prefer to leave 240V work to qualified electricians. 

Edited December 3, 2022 by BobAJob

[Radian]

1 hour ago, BobAJob said:

Personally, I prefer to leave 240V work to qualified electricians. 

Interesting. Makes me wonder about the differences between qualified electricians and qualified electronics engineers. The electricians are certified by a formal trade body like NICEIC and pay their annual fee, electronics engineers get a degree or college education and then go on to work on stuff where 240V is barely registering on their EHT test equipment. It's a bit of a head-slap when all you want to do is put in a new circuit (or other notifiable installation work) when your day-job is handling KVA EV electronics for example.

[TonyT]

You took the old faulty fitting down, so replace it yourself and save the cash

or are you worried that the joint boxes and cables going to the joint boxes also need sorting

 

ouch could be 2 hours😁

[BobAJob]

1 hour ago, TonyT said:

You took the old faulty fitting down, so replace it yourself and save the cash

or are you worried that the joint boxes and cables going to the joint boxes also need sorting

 

ouch could be 2 hours😁

Actually these lights were removed by the electrician I gave the job to. As far as I know the cable and joint boxes were all fine as he just unscrewed the wires from the existing lights and attached them the new ones and pushed them into place. I switched the light switch on to test them and they all worked. Job done. He removed them and fitted all the new ones in 1 hr 15 minutes.  He took the old ones away, so I thinking he might use them as spares or replacements. 

 

Total cost £200 which seemed a reasonable price. 

[saveasteading]

On 29/11/2022 at 11:41, BobAJob said:

That means he's charging £244.60 for 1 hr's work. 

Think of it as £40 per light.

If he had take 2 hours, through not being such an efficient  worker, would you have minded 2 hours at £122/hour?

Still a lot I know. 

But he has the risk of it not working for a reason not known until starting, dropping them, a faulty one he has to replace, and a call-back if one fails.

 

Also what is often ignored is the free visits when he is not then asked to do the work.

 

first visit including coming and going. An hour typically.

Getting the parts. An hour typically.

the job, including coming and going, 2 hours as it went so quickly.

that is 4 hours of his time used for your project. £244 /4 is £60/hour.

Allowing for the odd day when a visit is cancelled or can't work efficiently , say 4 weeks lost in the year. and then less holidays. 

£60 x 40 hours x 42 weeks:   £100,000 a year. Still rather good, so please encourage youth to do an apprenticeship and get into a trade.

 

And bottom line is to check prices and shop around first if you think that is excessive.

[BobAJob]

2 hours ago, saveasteading said:

Think of it as £40 per light.

If he had take 2 hours, through not being such an efficient  worker, would you have minded 2 hours at £122/hour?

Still a lot I know. 

But he has the risk of it not working for a reason not known until starting, dropping them, a faulty one he has to replace, and a call-back if one fails.

The risks you've mentioned can be mitigated by doing a proper quote process and doing the job right not quickly.  Risk is not something you build into your price - well you could but you'll end up with a high price. Instead deal with it by saying price could change should something unforeseen be found/happen. 

2 hours ago, saveasteading said:

 

Also what is often ignored is the free visits when he is not then asked to do the work.

 

first visit including coming and going. An hour typically.

Getting the parts. An hour typically.

the job, including coming and going, 2 hours as it went so quickly.

that is 4 hours of his time used for your project. £244 /4 is £60/hour.

Allowing for the odd day when a visit is cancelled or can't work efficiently , say 4 weeks lost in the year. and then less holidays. 

£60 x 40 hours x 42 weeks:   £100,000 a year. Still rather good, so please encourage youth to do an apprenticeship and get into a trade.

 

And bottom line is to check prices and shop around first if you think that is excessive.

Getting parts is a maybe twice a week task and involves collecting the parts of multiple jobs. That's part of being an electrician. I should pay 10% of that time if he is collecting the parts for 10 jobs.  The electrical wholesaler is a 15 minute drive away.  They order the parts online or on the phone while they are working and pick them up in one trip. 

 

I don't pay for his quoting time as he offers free quotes, so don't try and claw back time lost quoting for other jobs you didn't win). If he doesn't win the job after he quoted then maybe he should look at why? Probably the high price quoted. Change your approach to pricing and your quote to win job rate improves.  You get more work. Your business grows. 

 

Provide high quotes and your quote to win job rate is low. You get less work. You get a reputation for high quotes. Your phone stops ringing. You go out of business in the long run. You rename your business and do the same thing and repeat.  No a great way to do business. 

 

Sadly, I think most of the traders in my area overcharge and do poor quality work that people complain about. Their customers complain to checkatrade about them and their complaints get ignored and more customers get a badly done job.  Most of the people I know now prefer to do jobs themselves instead of paying a large amount of money for a poorly done job that has to be redone. 

 

There's something fundamentally wrong with the way British trades operate. Perhaps they have gotten greedy or lazy in times of plenty?

 

People don't seem to take time to do jobs properly. Instead, they overprice them or underestimate the amount of time needed, so rush them and do them badly hoping the customer doesn't notice until they've gone with the money. 

 

It'll be interesting to see how the coming recession affects these people. Hopefully, some of them will go to the wall when people no longer have the money to pay their high prices. 

Edited December 3, 2022 by BobAJob

[saveasteading]

15 hours ago, BobAJob said:

People don't seem to take time to do jobs properly. 

People! Can't trust them.

People with skills where there is a shortage? Greedy.

 

No site visit and quote is free of cost to the supplier.

It is charged in the quote, along with a share of lost job costs. 

 

I forgot to mention sickness cover, insrance, overheads.

 

I suggest you don't go into contracting or any other self employed position or you will undercharge for a while.

 

A very good diy book for Christmas perhaps. (There will be  profits and overheads unreasonably built in to the price though).

 

Been an interesting and informative discussion.

[BobAJob]

2 hours ago, saveasteading said:

People! Can't trust them.

People with skills where there is a shortage? Greedy.

 

No site visit and quote is free of cost to the supplier.

It is charged in the quote, along with a share of lost job costs. 

 

I forgot to mention sickness cover, insrance, overheads.

 

I suggest you don't go into contracting or any other self employed position or you will undercharge for a while.

 

A very good diy book for Christmas perhaps. (There will be  profits and overheads unreasonably built in to the price though).

 

Been an interesting and informative discussion.

Well I work in IT and I work on bids for multi-million pound contracts.  We do estimates based on client requirements and we add contingency into our price to cover risks. We don't price for lost jobs. Our day rate for different resources factors in holiday pay, sick, some profit, etc. We assume 18 working days a month per person. 

 

The cost of lost jobs is part of doing business and comes out of your profit, but that doesn't mean you come with wacky prices.

 

If we overcharged like these traders do then we would never win any projects. The only way to deal with rip off merchants is to make it clear to prospective customers, so that they don't fall for their high prices. Eventually they will learn to do better or they'll stop getting work. 

[saveasteading]

12 minutes ago, BobAJob said:

We don't price for lost jobs

Yes you do. It is within the overhead, for the proportion of time taken for these processes...and applied to labour, space and general costs.

It may be formalised or just 'within the overhead'.

Have a word with the FD about it.  They are usually happy that anyone is interested.

 

Taking it 'out of profit' means you are charging your customers for the failed tenders...as I said already.

It works, and is fair because normally everybody does the same.

 

I'm not guessing. I was an Estimator, and how much to charge for overhead was set as standard and adjusted if short of work, and I later ran a construction business.

People argue about charging or not, but only in hard times. 

 

From what IT costs, there are clearly huge wages, big profits and  large overheads. How can one of your industry help me on the phone for 30 minutes and charge £100. Ridiculous, as he was clearly sitting idle anyway.

Sorry, just having fun.

[SteamyTea]

When I go for a £2.85 coffee, I am paying about 30 times the price of the 'materials'.

What do I get for that huge markup?

Well to start with I get a nice girl or boy making it for me.  I also get a seat, at a clean table.  Toilets are are not too unpleasant.  Car parking (that costs a few quid here in the summer).

All the cafes have got 5 star ratings, the staff are properly trained,, and not just in making coffee, also in customer services.

I also know that if I go to one of the other branches of the chain, I will get the same service, in similar surroundings.  The product is consistent (I like the coffee they serve me, though cannot comment on any of the other products they serve).

So I accept that I can make a coffee at home, for 10p, but that is not the point.

 

33 minutes ago, BobAJob said:

The cost of lost jobs is part of doing business and comes out of your profit,

I think you will find it is from fixed costs, not lost profit.  High fixed costs will usually reduce profitability.  Profitability is not absolute profit.

 

Edit: Bit of a cross post with @saveasteading about profits/overheads/fixed costs.

Edited December 4, 2022 by SteamyTea

[BobAJob]

11 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

Yes you do. It is within the overhead, for the proportion of time taken for these processes...and applied to labour, space and general costs.

It may be formalised or just 'within the overhead'.

Have a word with the FD about it.  They are usually happy that anyone is interested.

 

Taking it 'out of profit' means you are charging your customers for the failed tenders...as I said already.

It works, and is fair because normally everybody does the same.

 

I'm not guessing. I was an Estimator, and how much to charge for overhead was set as standard and adjusted if short of work, and I later ran a construction business.

People argue about charging or not, but only in hard times. 

 

From what IT costs, there are clearly huge wages, big profits and  large overheads. How can one of your industry help me on the phone for 30 minutes and charge £100. Ridiculous, as he was clearly sitting idle anyway.

Sorry, just having fun.

No, overheads cover buildings, utility bills, non-billable staff like PAs and HR, etc. and as this trader doesn't have an office to pay for and he is a sole trader his overheads are low. 

 

The cost of failed bids comes out of the revenue we take from doing work. It's not factored into fixed costs as we don't know how many bids we'll do each year. We have a profit margin we'd like to make and sometimes we are able to achieve this while still winning the work and sometimes we aren't not, so we may agree to make a smaller profit if we want to win the work or we may decide not to bid if we can't make enough money out of it. We might even choose to make a loss on one piece of work for a customer if we think we could win future work from them.  In order to do a bid we have to first qualify it and get a budget allocated, so we have to confirm we have the skills to do the job and it fits with the kind of work we want to do and that we have a reasonable chance of winning the business against the competitors we know have been invited to bid for it. 

Edited December 4, 2022 by BobAJob

[SteamyTea]

2 minutes ago, BobAJob said:

No, overheads cover buildings, utility bills, non-billable staff like PAs and HR, etc. and as this trader doesn't have an office to pay for and he is a sole trader his overheads are low. 

I don't think you understand business accounting very well.

[saveasteading]

I give in. Must have been wrong all these years.

 

Anyway, your man did charge rather a lot, but that seems to be your problem, not his.

[BobAJob]

31 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

I don't think you understand business accounting very well.

Well I did go on a course on it with the FD and that's what he said goes into the overheads as these are fixed known costs to the business. 

 

There's not a fixed bid budget set at the beginning of the year. We just ask for a budget to cover the bid costs which might be 10 people working for 2 months to produce the bid. The business reviews our request for a bid budget and decides if the business can afford to do the bid based on money available, the value of the work we'd win and our estimated chance of winning it.  Depending on the time of year we may get told no, but generally it's a yes as we need to keep the work coming in, otherwise we have a lot of bums on seats not making money. 

 

I guess if you had a fixed size team that only did bids all the time then you might have the cost of that team as a fixed cost, but we don't.  We might have 5 or 10 bids all happening in parallel. These bid teams are made up of normally billable staff who get drafted into a bid team for a fixed period of time and then return to billable work when the bid is finished.  We have one fixed person who coordinates the variable number of bid teams. 

Edited December 4, 2022 by BobAJob

[SteamyTea]

2 minutes ago, BobAJob said:

Well I did go on a course

My boss has strange accounting ideas.  When we have to throw stuff away (a legal requirement) he prices it at the retail cost, not the wholesale costs.  VAT to him is a turnover tax, not a tax on profit (he still thinks we are on the old 12% scheme).

Luckily, in the words (almost) of Joe Walsh, "have accountants to take care of it all"

[saveasteading]

20 minutes ago, BobAJob said:

overheads as these are fixed known costs to the business. 

 

Ok I'm still here after all.  People need to know this.

 

On multimillion projects as you mention, the estimating team may spend weeks, even months, not 'making' anything.

 

The estimating team is usually a fixed cost, whether they win or lose a job.. and losing at the right price is a big part of their skill.

Do they have assistance from admin, buying department? Were there marketing costs?

The FD might know, or predict, that you win one job in 5.  So 4 quotes have cost and no contribution to overhead and no profit. The 5th one has to recover the cost of the 4 lost ones....or out of business you go.

 

Whoever has the final say may adjust the profit or overhead on a tender however they wish, perhaps on a whim. But all that time on jobs not won has to paid by the few that are. 

It is probably simply built in to the overhead that you are told to apply.

A proportion of their cost is included in every tender, win or lose.

 

It also has to include the directors' days at Twickers and golf and other 'networking'. That all comes out of overhead or out of profit..which hits the staff bonuses. 

[BobAJob]

14 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

Ok I'm still here after all.  People need to know this.

 

On multimillion projects as you mention, the estimating team may spend weeks, even months, not 'making' anything.

 

The estimating team is usually a fixed cost, whether they win or lose a job.. and losing at the right price is a big part of their skill.

Do they have assistance from admin, buying department? Were there marketing costs?

The FD might know, or predict, that you win one job in 5.  So 4 quotes have cost and no contribution to overhead and no profit. The 5th one has to recover the cost of the 4 lost ones....or out of business you go.

 

Whoever has the final say may adjust the profit or overhead on a tender however they wish, perhaps on a whim. But all that time on jobs not won has to paid by the few that are. 

It is probably simply built in to the overhead that you are told to apply.

A proportion of their cost is included in every tender, win or lose.

 

It also has to include the directors' days at Twickers and golf and other 'networking'. That all comes out of overhead or out of profit..which hits the staff bonuses. 

I hear what you are saying, but it isn't quite as straightforward as that.  If we just whacked the costs of the bids for the lost jobs on other projects we'd price ourselves out of the winning the other work and it becomes a bit to difficult to explain why you've got a magically £200,000 added to the price.  I believe they take a percentage out of the profit made on each project and put that back into bidding work. If we keep losing bids on price then clearly we're doing something wrong in our pricing method or our costs are significantly higher than our competitors so we need to cut something. 

 

Our fixed day rates cover the fixed costs and a bit of profit. We then have expenses and materials and a contingency percentage to allow for risks that may occur.  We have some complicated pricing spreadsheets which we plug our numbers into and it shows us the profit margin we'll achieve and then we have to go reworking things to achieve the target profit margin or we have a conversation about agreeing a different margin or taking a loss in order to win work from a new customer or work we really want that will position us for other work from the customer or other customers.  It's an investment the company makes in winning new business. It's a gamble and sometimes it pays off and other times it doesn't. 

Edited December 4, 2022 by BobAJob

[SteamyTea]

13 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

On multimillion projects as you mention, the estimating team may spend weeks, even months, not 'making' anything.

On very large military projects, the competing companies are often paid to produce designs and costings, and sometimes prototypes.

Which reminds me, I must go and look at that new stealth, the B-21.

[saveasteading]

3 minutes ago, BobAJob said:

t isn't quite as straightforward as that.

Agreed. not the sort of decision that many people are prepared to take. 

 

Its really annoying when you find that you were never going to get the job.

Sometimes it is 'mates' and you are being used to do a check price for the mate to just beat.

And once I priced a whole car component factory for a Japanese manufacturer, against 3 competitors.

It turned out that the Japanese manager was in the dark too (for credibility) and they were doing the same in 3 other towns and ....they built it in another country.

 

Are you quoting a lump sum, at total risk, or rates?