Contact info for Architect David Johnson

Housepoor, i realize that. I used 20% because that is on line with what some contractors will mark certain things up.

I am not sure what a gc’s liability insurance costs. Aside from that. I am wondering if these contractors consider worker’s comp a payroll expense or an insurance expense. My mom worked for an re management/owner and i will ask her how they looked at that. There is no way out of some of this and the city does not care if hic’s like me have insurance but with gc’s they require it.

Just to clarify – the insurance was not marked up 20%. It was 20% of the total job cost, as per the itemization. That meant the insurance cost alone was into 6 figures.

J: all businesses have to make a certain profit. It does not matter how they figure that profit so long as they make it. If they try to make too much profit they price themselves out of the job and the competiton gets it. A lot of it is a guessing game anyway and some people are better at it than others. And while the optics of adding say 20% to the insurance may look bad if the customer were to find the contractor’s scribblings on a note pad, at the end of the day what does it matter if he marks the subs and labor and insurance up 20% or if he marks just the subs and labor up say 25% and some thing else up more or less? The numbers will come out the same. The consumer and market detremines what the contractor can charge not whether a contractor can tack profit onto overhead.

In op’s case i suspect the contractor will be on that job and just that job for a certain amount of time and wanted to convey to the customer that all the expense they are see ing is not going into his pocket as profit but is going for a legitimate job related expense. For many customers, the cost of overhead is a difficult reality to comprehend.

I should add, if this is a reputable GC I would be shocked that they’re trying to build profit into the insurance line item. It costs what it costs I guess.

If that includes a builders risk policy (ie coverage for the property and construction materials in case it burns down or something) that’s within line of what I’ve seen. I think we pay around 12k per year for our builders risk policy for a landmarked brownstone doing a significant reno.

I can tell you that my workmen’s comp is 17% of payroll.

I won’t tell you what my liability is because i am a small contractor and my premium is lower than others.

When we reviewed bids for jobs in commercial, sometimes people broke the cost of insurance out. Sometimes not. Understand, if a contractor is going to be on a job and only one job for a period of time, you are in essence paying his insurance for that period. Its part of the overhead. I think this person broke this out to show you the reality of doing something the right way and covering ones ass(ets).

FYI there are a lot of fixed costs (Engineer/architect, inspections, permits, etc that approach 10k. Total). For us it’s part of a larger project so it’s hard to say how much it would be alone. you might as well go with the size that you can live with forever cause you will never want to replace it.

Thanks that’s very helpful. I may end up doing a quite shallow deck, big enough for a couple of chairs and side table–just a spot for a morning coffee–to keep it light down below.

We looked into glass and the cost (3x standard) didn’t make sense for what you get (a nominal amount more light especially when you account for there being furniture above). You probably want to do frosted glass so it’s not as bright as you might think). We looked at more radical configurations as well to get more light down there but DOB makes it hard to do anything other than the standard configuration. This is all assuming you’re talking about an 8x~19 deck off the back of the parlor floor.