Hourly Rates

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hi,

Here's something on which I'd welcome members' views.

How much is a reasonable day rate for skilled workers. I was chatting with some friends who own a large yacht and I mentioned that for an experienced joiner or glass-fibre guy, or motor engineer, the rate was about RM150 per day - for a self-employed guy.

They thought that this was expensive. I disagreed given that these are jobbing workers who have to include for days when there's no work, when the weather prevents work or when clients decide to abort, do it next month, etc.

Such tradesmen also have to include for tools, power equipment etc.

RM150 per day seems to me to be very reasonable. When my boat was in a yard, the builder charged RM130 - RM150 per day for skilled trades such as welders, carpenters, finishing painters etc. and RM80 - RM100 per day for unskilled workers.

     

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People who have never been self-employed are often clueless as to the rates that the self-employed need to charge.  They think only in terms of "price per hour" as if that was a salary paid for 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, 40 years of work.  In other words, they are uninformed of the true cost of their wages when they are working for someone else.

Self-employed need a higher per hour rate, because they themselves have to pay for:
1) Marketing themselves (finding more work)
2) Tools
3) Insurance, even performance bonds or 'Errors-and-Omissions' insurance
4) Unemployment savings
5) Retirement savings
6) Vacation savings
7) Overhead costs of an office, shop
8) Transport costs (they provide their own 'company truck')
9) And etc.

When I was self-employed, I made the mistake of charging people by the hour.  They quibbled over my rate.  A good friend, much more experience in self-employment, suggested that I give a Total Price bid.  This way the clients know exactly how much they will have to pay in the end, and won't have to worry about looking over the worker's shoulder to see if they are goofing off.

I began to give Total Price bids, and my hourly rate went up 4 to 5 times what I had asked before, because it motivated me to get the jobs done quicker.

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Here is another take on the hourly rate issue.

I have seen shops that post signs like this:

Job : $150 per hour
Fixing your attempt to do the job yourself : $250 per hour

In other words, if you think you can do it yourself, and then find out that you can't, they will charge MORE to fix than if they did it in the first place!

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What is the position re tipping?

Is a 10RM tip good or not? (I know it will depend on what is being done).
By way of example 
we had a problem with a light and the developers electrician came to look at it along with 2 other 'friends' - when it was fixed we gave them RM50;
on another occasion the 'bin' men were reluctant to remove our rubbish (there were lots of packing cartons) so we gave then extra but a few days later the garden rubbish men called and would not take what they should have (our garden rubbish plus one of our neighbours who had added theirs to ours) without payment and I refused because I did not want to get into the spiral of paying extra for everything.


The problem is we think in terms of UK prices and have to move way from that thinking particularly once we retire and have a dramatic drop in  income.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Jac

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In my experience (15 years), there is NO tipping in Malaysia.  Some places (hotels, high-end restaurants) will add 15% to cover gov't tax (5%) and service charge (10%), but other than that, NO  tipping.

These garbagemen are obviously taking advantage of your ignorance.  Just put your trash out and let it be.  If they don't pick it up, call Alam Flora or whatever other company has the trash collection contract.

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Hi Scott,

For skilled works RM150 per day seems about to be right (all in, excluding materials).
The last couple of years I had a lot of renovation works to be executed in my house.
Before I received bids from different contractors, I made a counter estimate based on RM10 per hour for unskilled workers and RM20 per hour for skilled workers. This including the overhead for the contractor, but excluding materials.
In construction it is custom to have a job done either on lump sum (fixed price) or on hourly basis. I choosed lump sum because fairly unknown with the Malaysian construction world, but for small jobs payment per hour is more usual.
Payments to contractor in different stages depending on the progress of the works.

Danny

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hi,

Yep, I think that about RM150 is right. My own experience of the construction world in Malaysia is that lump sum is about it for anything other than repairs.

The problem is getting an agreed specification, and any quality in the work. Sometimes I think that the solution is to just get it done, and then employ "finishers" as is done in shop/store fabrication.

The other experience here is the asking for discounts, so I suppose most contractors put-on 10% so they can then take it off. In the marina world, the marina management usually gets 10% as it's own rake-off from any outsiders employed to work on boats on the hard or on the pontoons.

In the UK I ran some "cost plus" contracts which were very straightforward and easy to see where money was flowing. I've suggested such contracts here but there seems to be a horror at stating the profit element. It seems that "cost plus 20%" drives folks crazy whereas a lump sum contract with 35% profit built-in will do very nicely.

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I began to give Total Price bids, and my hourly rate went up 4 to 5 times what I had asked before, because it motivated me to get the jobs done quicker.

Thinks back to when an opposition boat building firm  (100ft plus gin palaces) in WA had decided to put workers on contract in the late 80's

By the time these boats got to Brisbane, the company I worked for had to do many large repairs.

Seems the contractors had rushed the build, cut corners and produced inferior product

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Can I ask if anyone has a knowledge about how much it might cost to hire a web designer/master on a part time bases of about 20 hours per week

Cheers

JJ