# Have any of you seen this?



## ElIngeniero (Feb 7, 2008)

I thought some of you may enjoy this.


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## tgeb (Feb 9, 2006)

Seen it! I *own* it!


Only my, "Original Contract" is sunk, and the "Change Order" is taking on water, and listing to one side. :turned:




But it must be nice to have a setup like that guy has, good for him. :thumbup:


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## Bill (Mar 30, 2006)

Love it!
Notice the dinghy is the original and the yacht is the change order?
Wish I had his customer!


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## woodchuck2 (Feb 27, 2008)

Truth is stranger than fiction :thumbsup:, nice rides!!


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## ElIngeniero (Feb 7, 2008)

For some of the other trades here--is it true that plumbers, electricians, etc. make nothing on change orders? A buddy of mine is a plumber and he was telling me that he makes good money at contract price but takes a beating on any change orders, etc. That seems a little backwards to me.


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## muddinman04 (Jun 24, 2008)

It can be a little tricky doing extra work around here anymore. It used to be that you could do work based on a written PO from the superintendent but it has changed in the last few years. 
I now have to get written permission from the president or vice president of construction to perform the change order work. 
Sometimes I will get a verbal go ahead from the VP but it could take 2 or 3 weeks to process the request, then I usually have to wait 30 days to get paid. 
This is how most of the developers work around here
I believe my big boat would have to be named *contract*!


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## Noodle (Feb 19, 2008)

I have seen in some contracts that it states you can only add a certain % to a change order so alot of times you make little to nothing. I am relating this to jobs where they want it unit priced so they know all the labor pricing, material pricing and equipment pricing already.


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## MC Excavating (Jan 26, 2006)

When I used to be an estimator for a large union fence company, I learned how to make more money on change orders. Often in the contract or the specifications it would say that you could only mark up materials and labor 10% to 15% on change orders. When a change order was needed I would have to submit a break down of the cost and only show it being that it was marked up 10% or whatever. 

Fine, show them what they want to see. A 10% mark up on materials, labor, and equipment. All you do is inflate all your costs higher on equipment and material and maybe adding a few hours of labor and then only showing a 10% markup. Since this was a union company everybody knew what union wages where, so you couldn't monkey with those.

My point is that they don't know what your materials or equipment cost you. You just show them a higher cost than it would actually cost you.

So I would end up making a 70% to 150% mark up after the job cost report was done.

I'm not sure if this is ethical, but I don't think its ethical to limit you to a 10% mark up once you get the job. When you originally figured the original contract with 20% to 30% mark up.

I was taught to not go lower than 20% mark up on any jobs unless it was a job that was worth $500,000 up to the millions. Yes, there where jobs with millions of dollars worth of fence, like prisons and Nascar tracks.
Then less than 20% mark up was considered acceptable. Also if the materials far exceeded the cost of labor. Materials are what they are. The labor is what can screw you. 

For example, I once had a high security crash gate that was to be installed at a very busy airport. This gate was designed for the firetrucks to crash out to a plane crash outside the airport but not allow anyone to be able to crash in. The cost of the gate was like $40,000 but only $10,000 to install, so less than 20% mark up was considered acceptable because there was very little risk in the labor to install and we would be making a good profit just on the cost of the gate. 

If a job had more labor than material costs I might put a 50% or higher mark up because if I misjudged how much labor was involved I would be screwed. So, more risk meant higher mark up. For example labor intensive fence would be on a hillside where no equipment could get to and everything had to be dragged up by hand and the footings had to be jack hammered into rock just for basic 6' high chain link fence.


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