Starting as a sub-contractor. Rates?

[Bates.N]

I'm a stonemason and been sub-contracting to other masonry companies for about 6 years.
I'd quite like to get away from that and subby directly for main contractors/architects/building companies and be able to charge more.
I'm doing ok in making contacts but I'd like some advice on what I should be charging. Working for masonry companies I was charging around £15p/h, ideally I'd like to be charging in the £25/30p/h range; Im not sure if that is stretching it a bit for a labour-only contractor?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[TomJ83]

Looked at the Homebuilding & Renovating website. They have an article about subcontractors and they say that a typical day rate for a stonemason is £185. So if you work 8 hours per day you should get around £23 per hour.

https://www.homebuilding.co.uk/subcontractors-what-they-do-and-what-to-pay/

 

[Darren C]

If you were happy on a rate of £15 an hour as a subby then adding your everyday costs, tools, provision of holidays, occasional sickness and so on would get you to somewhere near £23 at least, I would have thought?

 

[Karllacey]

It actually depends quite a lot on a number r factors. It is not a simple case of how much something cost but the variety of work you are undertaking is it residential commercial industrial non hazardous hazardous working at heights and most of the time it is not specifically looking at prices per hour when dealing with principal contractors but more of a case of providing a package deal with the bottom line price. They may have caused ask for a breakdown in prices.

There is also to take into account credibility experience infrastructure and so on.

Some of this can be built whereas other aspects need to be earned both with smart work and hard graft and picking your fights carefully.

Also there are a number of other factors that you need to consider which involve legalities picking the right customer as well as picking the right suppliers and negotiation across the board be flexible not too flexible but just right.

In summary it is probably best not to look at the price per hour but to look at the long term benefit in becoming involved in a business which is looking to expand and explore new routes to market of course on the flip side there are a number of new stresses that are brought to the table from operations to finance targets to marketing the sales and so on.

Sorry for any spelling mistakes I am dictating this from my phone happy hunting