Road Crossing Cost check

[ultramods]

Last week I asked our preferred builder (ground works and block work) to amend a couple of items on the quote and to quote for the road crossing for our services. The prices that he has come back with all seam quite expensive what do you think?

 

He has quoted £5400 for connecting to the sewer which is in the middle of the road and ducting for water, electricity, gas and phone which are all in the pavement, across the road

 

The £5400 doesn't include any permits or traffic management, that is an additional £1600.

 

Does £5400 sound OK as I thought that it was expensive?

 

He has also quoted £1350 for dropping the kerb on the pavement, to provide access to the drive - again this sounds expensive.

 

And finally he had initially quoted £46 psm for 104 square metres of riven paving slabs (supply and fit) for patio and path around perimeter of house. I then asked him last week to quote for laying granite slabs (I would be providing the granite slabs), he has quoted £54 psm. Again this sounds very high.

 

When I told the builder that I was going to get some more quotes for the road crossing and laying the granite paving he told me that if they don't get to do it then they would review if they do any of the  work.

 

 

[newhome]

So you asked him to quote for X and he was happy to do that and provided a price, now you've asked him to quote for Y and Z too and he's threatening to withdraw the quote for X unless you contract him for X, Y and Z? That sounds pretty poor to me. I have to say our groundwork contractor offered a reasonable price to start with but anytime we wanted something fractionally different the additional cost came in way above what we felt was reasonable when compared to the price of the original job. Almost like he felt he would use the opportunity to maximise his profit. And in the early days before we wised up he would 'suggest' things that could be done slightly differently but we soon noticed that he was changing a considerable amount extra for each of these little suggestions, some of which didn't amount to much, so we kept having to say, just get on with what you've been asked to do. On the odd occasion when we did want one of his suggestions we asked how much extra he would charge immediately and decided based on that whether we wanted it or not. 

 

Maybe the ground worker feels that he has underpriced the original quote? Did you have other quotes to compare it to? 

[Jeremy Harris]

I've just looked at our ground works breakdown of cost, at 2013 prices.  We had two service trenches crossing single track lanes, one carrying a power cable the other carrying the effluent discharge from our treatment plant.

 

The cost breakdown from our contractor's QS is:

 

Effluent drain road crossing - Mill Lane

Excavate trench across road. £216.00
Allow for reinstatement. £900.00
110mm effluent outlet pipe. £77.76
Pea gravel bed and surround to pipe. £117.29
Test foul drainage. £90.00
 

Electricity main road crossing - Mary Barter's Lane

Excavate service trench 1000 deep in road. £252.00
Allow for reinstatement. £1,050.00
150mm rigi-duct. £67.79
Draw-cord. £7.14

 

On top of this I paid the council for a licence to dig across these two highways that cost around £500.  That fee included the council coming out to inspect the road surface reinstatement standard late in the afternoon of the day the work was carried out.  I'm not sure of the road widths, at a guess I'd say around 4 to 5m long trenches were dug across each.
 

[ultramods]

yes, he priced back in January for doing all the groundworks (drainage, driveway, patio, foundation, UFH screed) and the superstructure block work and granite. last week we asked to change the Riven slabs to granite and the addition of the road crossing for the services as in January we didn't know where the services were.

 

 

Edited July 11, 2018 by ultramods

[Redoctober]

We recently [ past few weeks ago] contracted a local firm to do our road crossing - it was a single track road and he put in the mains water pipe and ducting for a BT line. The price charged also included taking the mains water into our plot, installing a boundary box and setting up a stop cock for the builders. All for a touch shy of £1k. This included the road closure permit.

I would suggest you do ring round and get some other quotes for this particular aspect of your project.

[ProDave]

By way of another comparison, we paid Scottish Water £1000 for the road crossing under a 3 metre wide single track road, so double that for a dual track road.  That was to excavate a 900mm deep 300mm wide trench, lay their pipe in the bottom and put duct in for electricity and telecoms as they filled then make good.  In our case no traffic management, just a heavy steel plate they could push over the trench when someone wanted to come past.

[vivienz]

That's a rather nasty threat to make.  I'm not sure I would feel comfortable about dealing with someone threatening to walk off a job just because you don't agree to them ripping you off on another piece of work.  He's not the only one who can review a working relationship.

[ultramods]

On 05/07/2018 at 22:58, vivienz said:

That's a rather nasty threat to make.  I'm not sure I would feel comfortable about dealing with someone threatening to walk off a job just because you don't agree to them ripping you off on another piece of work.  He's not the only one who can review a working relationship.

 

Yip

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 11, 2018 by ultramods

[Hecateh]

It kind of makes sense - There are economies of scale if they can plan the whole job from beginning to end.  

 

His response suggests that he wants to make it work - but if they are having to work round other people, so may plan to do something on a specific day, and then your other contractor lets you down then that's them left up shit creek.  

 

It sounds like you have a good relationship.  And that they can do the job that you want.

Why not ask him to visit to discuss the bigger issues 

or

even go back and say that you have been advised to get other quotes and it makes sense to do so but, as your preferred supplier, you will discuss with them before ordering elsewhere

[ultramods]

 

The road crossing is an additional piece of work that I have asked him to quote for.

 

The road crossing can be done separately to the rest of the work, and the ducting left at the boundary for the builder to continue. it would be no different than say the plot was a serviced plot and all the services were available at the boundary.

 

As for the patio and paving, that could be done by another company at the very end of the project once all the builders work has been completed.

 

I spoke to the company that would be supplying me the granite paving and they said £54 psm to lay the slabs is a ridiculous price for 106 sm.

Edited July 11, 2018 by ultramods

[newhome]

Tell him it takes you over budget so at present no one will be getting the patio and paving work. £54 m2 just for labour to lay the slabs is ridiculous given he quoted £46 for supply and fit previously. How can it be more expensive if he is not having to provide the materials? I wouldn’t be happy either. 

 

 

 

[ToughButterCup]

11 hours ago, ultramods said:

[...]

And finally he had initially quoted £46 psm for 104 square metres of riven paving slabs (supply and fit) for patio and path around perimeter of house. I then asked him last week to quote for laying granite slabs (I would be providing the granite slabs), he has quoted £54 psm. Again this sounds very high.

[...]

 

Relevant section from SPONS:

 

Slab paving
precast concrete paving slabs on subbase; including excavation	m²	47.00	to	60.00
precast concrete tactile paving slabs on subbase; including excavation	m²	68.00	to	86.00
York stone slab paving on subbase; including excavation	m²	120.00	to	155.00
imitation York stone slab paving on subbase; including excavation	m²	80.00	to	100.00

 

 This....

11 hours ago, ultramods said:

[...]

When I told the builder that I was going to get some more quotes for the road crossing and laying the granite paving he told me that if they don't get to do it then they would review if they do any of the  work.

[...]

 

makes me close to certain that there is a hidden agenda.

[nod]

I may be out of step

but the prices don’t seem unually high to me Given how busy the building trade is at the moment 

Getting a fixed price quote can be very difficult and getting a builder to stick to them Even more so

If possible I would get three more quotes for the whole job and see how they compare His labour and material costs will be going up on a monthly basis also 

 

Some of the material hikes have been hard to take 

Blocks in short supply in the run up to 2016 Christmas 40 % rise in Jan

I bought my English oak one supplier wanted an extra 50%

Blaming brexit 

I pointed out that it is grown here in the U.K. 

He said yeah it doesn’t work like that 

[ToughButterCup]

34 minutes ago, nod said:

I may be out of step

but the prices don’t seem unually high to me Given how busy the building trade is at the moment 

[...]

 

Gary, if you are out of step, then there's no hope for the rest of us mate.