How to price a construction job without losing money

The job that loses you money usually isn't the disaster — it's the ordinary one you priced on gut feel three weeks ago. Good pricing is boring and methodical, and it's the single biggest lever on whether your business makes money.

Start from cost, not from what you think they'll pay

Price up from your real costs, then add margin. Working backwards from 'what will they accept' is how you win jobs that aren't worth doing. There are three cost buckets:

• Labour: the hours the job will take, at what each person actually costs you (including the on-costs — NI, holiday, not just the hourly rate).
• Materials: everything you'll buy in, with a sensible allowance for waste.
• Plant and other: hire, fuel, skips, subcontractors, anything job-specific.

The number most people get wrong: labour

Labour is the biggest variable cost and the one people underestimate most. 'About three days' becomes five. The fix is to stop guessing and start measuring — track the real hours your crew spends on each job, so next time you're estimating from data, not optimism.

Add margin on purpose

Your margin isn't 'a bit on top'. Decide the percentage you need to run the business and make a profit, and add it deliberately. If you don't know your overheads — the van, the insurance, the phone, the hours you spend quoting — you can't know what margin you actually need.

Don't forget VAT (and get it right)

Quote with VAT handled properly so the figure the customer sees is the figure you can bill. Building quotes from line items with VAT calculated automatically removes a whole category of embarrassing corrections.

Send it fast and make it look the part

A quote sent the same day, as a clean branded PDF, wins work a scribbled figure sent next week doesn't. Speed and professionalism are part of the price — they signal a business that has its act together.

Then close the loop: price the next job from this one

Here's the part most firms skip. After the job, compare what it actually cost to what you quoted. Did the loft conversion really make 30%, or did labour run over and eat it? When you can see real per-job margin, every finished job makes your next quote sharper. That's how pricing compounds over time.