permit pricing

[fourteen/two]

I was wondering how others work their permit cost into their estimates.
The actual cost of the permit is easy to determine, but I'm having a hard time arriving at a cost for the time of getting the permit.
Sometimes it takes 10 minutes, other times 60 minutes.
Sometimes multiple trips because of some paperwork issue.

I had been tacking on $100 to what ever the permit cost is.
Which is great on the quick ones.
But not so great on the slower ones.

A flat fee and just take the good with the bad?
A percentage of the job cost?

 

[BryanMD]

I was wondering how others work their permit cost into their estimates.The actual cost of the permit is easy to determine...
A flat fee and just take the good with the bad?
A percentage of the job cost?

Like everything else ask 10 and you'll get 15 answers.

The best and/or most fair approach I've witnessed was to make the bid price $X "+ permits/fees/etc"; sometimes noting an approximate price for end users (GC's should know the rates).

The rationale was that these are a 'pass through' expense (not something being marked up) which allows the bid to be lower and customer to see the sometimes very high fee amount broken out. (This assumes getting the fee in advance of trotting down to the county office)

The time to trot,etc is usually just part of the general overhead.

 

[mdshunk]

My permits are free, but the third-party inspections cost dear. The price depends on the type of work inspected. It doesn't take me more than a few minutes to pull a permit, and I try to do them in batches whenever I can (sometimes after the fact on certain types of work).

 

[infinity]

We don't include permit fees in our price but do make an allowance for the time it will take to get the permit. Fees can vary from town to town so there is no one dollar amount that will cover each situation.

 

[hardworkingstiff]

I agree with Bryan. Permit fees are passed through, time to get them is overhead and recovered in the job. I guess it's easy for me because most of my jobs require an engineered drawing and when you have a stamped drawing the permit process is not bad.