Thankyou my man Justin, great advice. This video, aswell as others has really helped!!! 👌Loving your work 💪

Thank you very much this has given me so much to think about when qouteing as I've started my self at the start of covid

Great video much appreciated I myself have left site work and started private so much happier keep the videos coming.

Another great video I’am so glad you mentioned contingencies and the biggest one Profit, I think it’s very easy to miss when you first start out on your own, it’s taking on a whole new thing running a business this is why videos like this are great. Grizzly Adams and the Bear loved that programme you have to many grey hair 😂 all the best Tony 👍 Happy New Year and a prosperous one.

All very valid points Justin , So easy to overlook things . Explains the REALITY of the job .

Hi mate, spot on and honest in wot your saying. I mainly do private work and agree with all the points you make. Great video.

Thanks Grizzly, good advice, I would also add something on for plant, digger and fuel etc, plus a bit towards wear and tear and replacement of tools, disc cutter, angle grinder, mixer etc

Brilliant advice Justin!. There will be alarm bells ringing in people's ears now as I know people won't put the effort in to think like this when quoting. It's a minefield out there and like you said you don't know what's under the ground. Great video and a good eye opener 😁

Haha a lot of valid points mate water 🚿 is key nightmare when no tap or non with neighbours exc. lol. a lot don’t realise how much certain bricks 🧱 in slabs can cost. Good video so pressed the subscribe bottom. 👍🏻

Good video, no wonder we get under cut though when you say it’s 150 a day for a bricklayer

Fantastic video and insight as usual Justin! 🙌💯⚒

I've just had a quote for a drive putting in with a 1ft deep of soil taking off 20ft x 40ft . He reckons it'll take a week & the quote was £5k in labour alone (there's only 2 of them) with £12K in other costs. That's why I'm watching plenty of videos to do it myself. 😅

Agree with everything you said, great vid. The only thing I would add to it is to allow in your rate for downtime i.e bad weather, deliveries not on time etc. I calculated this year that between these two alone we lost 28days Also to allow for equipment maintenance etc which I know people have already mentioned in previous comments

great points justin its a far cry from working on a site to working for yourself in the private sector,and not suited to everyone,working on site is the easier option if you want a easy life but 100% right in saying you cannot rely on bricklaying alone to keep you busy unless you sub a bit of other small builders,you also mentioned costs which some people never even think of and which adds to more people undercutting the rest of us without realising they are and that they are undervaluing themselves in turn end up being busy fools

Nice video some good Information thanks for taking your time out to make the video am going to start putting some of that profit Into my prices

I was shopping around the builders merchants for prices, what a real eye opener. Travis want £80 for a jumbo bag of sand, Selco is £47. That is Cardiff btw, and i thought i had a trade account with Travis 😳😂

Great video. I know to many lads that think they should be pricing up privates like prices on site, but my experience is you can't price a wall just on per Bricks/block there is to many factors to take into consideration

I would point out that your costs are based upon your own ways of building, I see lots of brickwork in wall around here where the knick ou the original wall and leave the base layers under soil level, They then build back on that rather than digging out new concrete. For cost you should know your basic daily costs for labour, tools and business items. then on top your materials plus labour ,plus a profit margin for things that go wrong and future things like emergencies when things go wrong or savings and takes and regulation changes

Great information

Great video.. I left Bricklaying about 20 years ago a couple of years after completing my apprenticeship. I worked for some who expected me to have the same speed as guys with loads of experience. I gave up in the end, but toying with the idea of going back. Could you do a video advising how to get work on site? More specifically; how to approach and quote and get the work. Im guessing you just go up to a site agent but not sure.

Great advice

From my previous comment I'm going to make a generic spreadsheet using your info. Cheers Grizzly.😊

I would add on break down cover for your van and mini digger ect

Awsome channel

Love the vid, I'll stick to site work 🤣, I'm retired Thank The Force

For anyone just starting out pricing private work, I'm not sure I would be trying to add in a profit margin. Often for those just starting out, it's hard enough to cover all of the other costs you mention and to start building a good reputation and customer recommendations.

I'm in the Greater London area and I do both site work and private work. I'll always lean towards private work but I still keep my CSCS card in date in case I can't find my own work and have to go on site. Now, speaking of the word 'site'. There's site work and then there site work. If you're doing met-sec work on the big concrete frames and you're working for the likes of Lee Marley or Landmark (the latter I'll never, ever work for again) the work is pretty poor. However, on medium sized jobs like one or two small blocks of flats or a small housing site the quality of work is comes under much greater scrutiny from the foreman but in general smaller firms are better to work for when you're on site.

I accept all your considerations but surely the should have all been cost as you visit the site for estimates and ensure you are paid a fair rate for the job, That can be hard when the cheapy guys come along and underbid and often do an inferior job. I normally cost materials to the customer separate to labour tools cost and never had problems, unless they try to bid you down. when your doing pointing work it can become a problem as folks think its a sort of cheapy job so shouldn't cost much.

Delivery of materials and the mark up on materials

Need to add say 25 days out the 200 working days per annum for downed days. Rainy days. These rainy days must be incorporated into private pricing aswell. Not always going to be able to do the job every day. Nature of our weather.

Being a Builder in the private sector is no walk in the park, and I find pricing has got to be THE most difficult part of the job, competition out there can be fierce, I find there's just too many Builders who are only too willing to cut your throat to get the work. I'm a brickie myself who left the sites 30 years ago to start on my own, I haven't made my fortune, I'd say at times I've managed to make a decent living out of it, and at worst I've just managed to eek a living from it, what with recessions and double dips, and now we got this this pandemic (I'll refrain from getting on my soap box over that one). But as we all know, being recommended by previous customers is usually the best way to get the work, but that's still never a guarantee, I find the majority of people look at the bottom line first, and if they can save money, then they are usually quite happy to take a chance on some random guy who's quote came in a £1000 cheaper than yours (just to use as an example). Ha, and don't get me started on Plumbers, that's a licence to print money. But overall, you simply can't dress the building trade up in any way, it's far from being a glamorous occupation, whether you're on site or doing private work, it's all hard dirty work...Thankfully I haven't got that long to go before I retire, and TBH, I won't miss it...well, maybe I will...a bit

What I have found a lot recently is the client cutting out the builder and trying to run the job themselves, they will get a groundworker in who in turn recommends a bricklayer etc etc. All of whom will include materials This is all down to certain television programmes, I don't mind it personally because I can just turn up do my brickwork then on to the next one but on the other hand they are doing builders no favours

Job

So how much did you price for the wall in the end?

the way you ve worked out just to build the wall 1000 bricks bricklayer + labourer £ £205 per day that works out 410 per tho 500+ anywere

I'm gonna have to start charging more ' cos I'm drinking a lot more these days🍺🍺🍺

Site work is brilliant for a bricky.as for no pride or being rough.thats down to the forman to get rid of the muppets.in me experience if your shit you will soon be found out

Pricing his hard because everybody works at different speeds

too reasonable never do private work for a third party unless you know them well or an architect who is a project manager danger people always want work done cheap, being too nice and inexperienced is a bad mix

Bricklayer should be getting $10 a brick building a whole house. All the builders sellers are making hundreds of thousands of dollars and the bricklayer work for free. Every one should stop working let the builder lay the ffff bricks them self