Do you charge by the hour? If so, what are you actually charging your clients for? Is it your brute strength, or your understanding of the Building Regulations, or your cunning knowledge of the best mortar mix for bedding paving slabs?
In reality, it’s all of those things. Your current hourly rate is a payback for all your years of learning, training and practicing your skills, so that your client gets a good job done, in the shortest possible time, using the best methods and materials, according to the latest industry standards.
Well, that’s the theory, anyway.
When I take my van into the garage to have the clutch fixed, the garage owner charges me £55 per hour for his mechanic’s time. It hurts me to pay this, especially if it takes him four hours to do it. But he has to pay for the rent on his garage, for his insurance, his car lift and his other tools. And the mechanic knows how to fix a clutch, whereas I don’t.
On the occasions when I have needed to employ a solicitor, they have charged me £250 to £300 per hour. And they don’t even have to rent a garage or buy a car lift or get their hands dirty! But they have had to study for donkey’s years to get where they are. And they know exactly what’s what in the legal world, whereas I clearly don’t.
Professional builders, too, have their tools, their overheads, and their years of education and training. They should be proud to charge a proper professional hourly or daily rate for their expertise.
The only problem is that most private clients don’t have the slightest idea about how much training and experience goes into making a good builder, which opens the door for any Tom, Dick or Harry to start calling himself a “builder”, and charging the same rates as the rest of us.
I know a bloke exactly like this, who charges himself out at £300 per day cash, and has no building industry training at all. He is quite handy at carpentry, in a DIY sort of way, but nowhere up to the speed that you’d expect from a tradesman. He knows how to wallpaper a bedroom, and he can paint anything that’s not moving, as we all can.
But the last time I saw him, he was trying to lay bricks, and mixing the mortar with his client’s garden spade. Yeah, I know – whilst charging £300 per day.
Still, it’s not for me to grass him up. The British building industry remains totally unregulated.
Fortunately, most of us have the training, the skills, and the experience, and we should be proud to charge the going rate for our work.
