Yes. But not to the extent that is allowed to happen in some of these RFCA contracts.
You can’t claim that £550 on a job to swap out 2 light tubes is fair because it also covers “costs” and expect to be taken seriously.
How high are their outgoings if they need to add several hundred pounds to every tiny job?
Take the £500 set of tools as an example… Over a 10 year life expectancy that’s £50 per year.
If I have 100 customers per year that’s 50p per customer I have to clear to pay for my tools.
I don’t know whether I’m going to have 100 customers, or 50, so I just have to make an estimate of what I can reasonably expect. Then I have to make a judgement call on what my labour charge will be.
If I get it wrong I make a loss… That’s how running a business works.
This is why it’s not such great value for money… Because instead of a fair bidding process for a fair price there are obstacles placed in the way of perfectly capable companies and those that are granted the golden handshake are allowed to charge outrageous amounts.
What’s worse is the regularity with which contracts are given to incompetent, fraudulent, even criminally negligent companies despite the vast number of complaints against them.
It’s not just RFCA of course, you see it with local authority too.
Certainly not the way it works down here. I’ve had them come and change fittings and the price was quoted for (I know because I had to go and open for them to do the quote as they refused to go to Wing to collect keys!).
They then proceeded to replace the wrong fittings and were then paid again over my protests to come and change the correct ones!
Sounds like my door handles bloke…
Invent work. Do it poorly. RFCA pay again to put it right… And the irony is that we’re told we can’t do self help because they won’t pay to put it right if we mess it up.
I recall opening up for an electrician once to swap one of the storage heaters onto a constant feed instead of timed.
Literally a 10 minute job moving a wire from one bar to another. First it took the lad about an hour to swap it only to discover that all he’d done was to move the neutral so naturally it was still on the timer.
Then he spent another 45 odd minutes “fault finding” (I tried to politely explain to him what he’d done wrong, but he didn’t get it). Then another hour to do the job properly.
Add in the lunch break and the fact that he was an hour and a half late arriving… and I’d lost the best part of my work day.
Then he announced that they’d need me to open up again on another day that week so that the boss could come in to inspect and sign the job off.
What I should have done is put an invoice in to RFCA for my time plus £500 ‘costs’
The great armoury swap over was a laugh, they couldn’t get the old one out so just bolted the new one next to it.
I pointed out that this was unacceptable as it had taken 1/4 of my stores out of play.
WeXO was giving it “but we can’t pay them to do the job twice” it took words of 1 syllable and coping in the ARC to get the message across that we shouldn’t have paid them at all yet as they hadn’t done the job once yet.
Worst part was that she had overseen the works being done!!!
I’d say that he can’t be criticized for taking a lunch break, but the system which required me to give up work for a day to open the building could be. …An additional hour whilst he has his lunch and I’m losing money doesn’t sit too happily with me.
I’ve only been asked once, I think, to attend the unit to let someone in, and that was because we’d just had the padlocks to the gate changed and WHQ hadn’t been given a key yet.
I’ve been down at the same time as contractors but that was mostly a coincidence!
I wouldn’t say it was totally an ATC problem though… RFCA own the building - It’s their property they’re repairing, not ours.
We did eventually get a new WExO and the process changed so that unpaid volunteers weren’t being expected to do someone else’s paid job. I don’t mind a little extra public money being spent for the guy to collect keys on the way to the unit instead of me losing a wage.
Of course then we ended up with a whole other set of problems because they wouldn’t tell us when people were turning up…
“I see they’ve been in to carry out the portable appliance testing sometime this week… It would have been useful to know they were coming so that I could have left all the portable appliances out for them. They were locked in the store, where they live, so the company will have to come back for a second visit please because I need these tested…” More needlessly wasted public money…
Same when at Lyneham - there were designated amounts for meals depending on where you where in the world. It used to be a “rates” cash allowance paid daily / accounted for by the imprest holder. Any surplus cash not wanted would be handed back the next day & used to offset the hotel accommodation bill) couldn’t take “local” dosh back to UK. You had plenty of time on the flights to do the paperwork.
This worked very well across the range of personal meal / drink requirements (steak, burger or whatever) & more importantly, whatever time you wanted to eat - or in the case of the MAMs / Police / engineers / pax / what time that you find to eat! You could partake in the hotel, choose room service, or go out to a local facilities - steakhouse or the nearby “Scottish restaurant,” your choice.
System was changed then to “actuals” - the imprest holder paid for what you ate / drank (a nominal amount of alcohol was acceptable for an evening meal, with starter, main course, dessert & cheese / biscuits). This also meant that the “non-crew” personnel had to eat in the hotel.
Naturally, this was a huge faff for timings, but more importantly, as there was no cost restriction, guess what, steak, lobster, rare local delicacies became the order of the day. I paid (or rather Aunty Betty’s AMEX paid!) for one meal in Oman, I think it was £2000 for 10 crew - previous dinner allowance was something like £50 per person. We didn’t actually rip the guts out of it too much either, although the 3rd bottle of Chateau Neuf du Pape did edge things up a bit.
Lo & behold, the accounting wallahs reverted back to “rates” within a month; their budget had used up about 4 month’s of planned costs in only a month.
The £550 price tag for two tube changing does seem excessive…
…is there not a “hourly rate” available for RFCA jobs?
based on a quick Google fluorescent tubes can be bought as cheap as Sub £10.
lets say, its £15 per tube, simply because its a Govt contract and a bit of mark up.
costs are £30.
the job would take less than 10 minutes, but in the real world anyone would charge half and hours work…and to be fair the time on site would be closer to 30 minutes once gates and building opened, collected ladder from the van and found the room, done the ten minute job and reverse the entry.
knowing these type of contractors are never local lets assume an hours drive each way, so 2.5hours of “time” to pay for.
£550 - £30 for the tubes = £520 (cost for time)
at 2.5hrs for the job = £208/hour
now that is silly money in anyone’s book as an hourly rate - i would be expecting time with someone with either Dr at the start of their name or used to wearing a curly wig at that price*
i don’t know how these invoices are priced up, but there must be an audit system somewhere that is failing if it is passing this kind of job off as “ok”
We know that a car mechanic charging £60/hr private garage or £100/hour for manufacturer pays for more than just the hourly rate. I do get the argument that the van, the insurance and tools and everything that comes with employment needs to be paid for…but £200/hour is excessive when compared to the competition…
(does it really cost that much to get, and then maintain a Govt contract with security clearances etc. to justify this high hourly rate?)
*£200/hr at 40 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year is a salary of £432k!
why do lawyers deserve to be paid more than a very good electrician?
I disagree with this. Under current market conditions, you would expect to pay someone more who needs to use a very niche & expensive bit of equipment, rather than someone who can just turn up with much cheaper tools
the “equipment” the lawyer has is their knowledge, skill and experience in law.
I don’t disagree that there is a going rate for services received, and the more niche, expensive a service is, the higher the price that is charged to cover the cost of that…
but what niche items or expensive bit of equipment does an electrician carry to require £200/hour overheads?
as mentioned by @wdimagineer2b if they added an extra £500 onto a invoice they’d be out of business as it wouldn’t be a competitive business model
I am not suggesting a tradesman’s van doesn’t have running costs, nor is their registration to an approved organisation for their trade following what could be expensive training. Nor suggesting that their tools can all be bought from Screwfix and get change from £20…but they are “tools of the trade” the cost of which is recouped over their working life, not on every job the tradesman’s goes to.
So you are willing to pay a lawyer for their knowledge, however a fully upto date, registered time served knowledge, skilled and experienced trade doesn’t warrant the same price?
