Pricing electrical jobs without going broke on the variations

The variation is where electrical businesses go to die, quietly. Not the spectacular non-payment, not the job that was never going to be profitable, but the extra day that was obvious to anyone who had opened the board, and that never appeared on the quote because the quote was written from the driveway.

Pricing is not a talent for guessing what a builder wants to hear. It is the habit of putting every real cost on the page so that the number you offer is a number you can deliver. The rest of the contracting-business hub is about people, vans and saying no. This piece is about the arithmetic that makes those things possible.

Nothing here is a schedule of rates. Awards move. Supplier prices move. Tender thresholds that a council or a department published last year are not gospel and are not repeated here as if they were. Check Fair Work and the current Electrical, Electronic and Communications Contracting Award for the labour you employ. Check your own books for the labour you are.

Preliminaries are not padding

Preliminaries are the costs of being allowed to work. They are boring, and they are how a “simple” commercial job eats a day before a cable is pulled.

Inductions, badging, parking, a site-specific SWMS, a JSEA that the principal contractor will reject twice, a white card that an apprentice left in the other van, a height ticket, an asbestos awareness card, a COVID or visitor declaration that still lives on someone’s clipboard. Travel beyond your free radius. A scissor lift you do not own. A second person because the isolation is in a live plantroom. Waste disposal for fluorescent tubes. A temporary construction supply that must stay up while you alter the permanent board.

If the job is on a construction site, read the current AS/NZS 3012 before you assume your ordinary attendance is enough. Construction wiring, inspections and the next wet week are not free extras.

Write preliminaries as lines, even if you later wrap them into a single attendance figure. A builder who sees “attendance and preliminaries” as a lump will still argue it. A builder who sees “two inductions, one lift, one after-hours isolation” has less room.

Do not be shy about after-hours. A shopping-centre tenancy that can only be isolated from 10pm is not a daytime rate with a torch. It is penalty time, tired people, and a lock-up procedure. Price the hours you will actually be there.

Attendance means being there when other people are not ready

Electrical work waits for plasterers, tilers, cabinetmakers, data subcontractors and the distributor. If your quote assumes a clear run, you will attend four times and bill one.

Say how many attendances are included. Say what an extra attendance costs. Say how much notice you need. A kitchen reno that wants “you on Tuesday in case the benchtop guys finish” is a reservation, not a job. Reservations have a fee or they have a cancellation.

On commercial sites, attendance includes the time you stand in a permit office. On domestic sites it includes the time you spend finding the owner who has the only key to the meter box. Neither of those minutes appear in a per-point price.

If you are the one-van business, an attendance that goes nowhere is a day you cannot sell again. You cannot recover it by “working faster” on the next job. Put it on the quote or put it on the variation terms.

Hidden board work is the usual ambush

A quote written from a photograph of a neat bank of RCDs is a fiction if you have not opened the covers, looked at the MEN, looked at the incoming cable temperature, and looked at the rear of the gear. The hidden work is almost always the same list.

No spare ways, so the “add two circuits” job is a board replacement or a sub-board.

A shared neutral that will not survive a new load.

An earth electrode you cannot find.

Consumer mains that are already at capacity.

Asbestos backing, a concrete render that has buried the box, or a meter panel that the DNSP must attend.

Labelling that bears no relationship to the circuits.

A tenant board that is not isolated from the landlord’s lighting.

You cannot price that from the kerb. You can do two honest things. Charge for an investigation and then price the work. Or price the visible work and write a provisional sum for the board, with a clear trigger: “once covers are removed, the board will be quoted as a variation / conversion of PC item”.

What you cannot do, and remain solvent, is lump-sum a renovation that includes “make the board work” when you have not seen the board. Builders love that sentence. It means “absorb the risk”.

Lighting upgrades are famous for this. The battens are visible. The circuit in the ceiling, the emergency classification and the leftover ballast are not. If you price only the visible fittings, you have priced a different job.

Prime cost, provisional sums and variations

Use the words as if they mean something.

A prime-cost item is an allowance for something the client will choose later, or something whose price you cannot honestly fix today: a light fitting, a particular switchgear, a DNSP fee, a fire-rated enclosure. You state the allowance, the margin you will apply, and the rule for over and under.

A provisional sum is an allowance for work you know will happen but cannot measure yet: chasing in an old wall, a board alteration, a route through a roof that nobody has entered. Same discipline. Same conversion rule.

A variation is work that was not in the scope, or a change to the scope. It needs a description, a price or a rates basis, and an instruction from someone who can actually instruct you. “While you’re here” from an apprentice carpenter is not an instruction.

Write the variation clause in the quote. Time for approval. Rates for labour. Markup on materials. What happens if they want the work done before they sign. If you start the extra work on a nod, you have donated it.

Do not use “PC” as a hiding place for work you were too lazy to take off. A PC item that is really the whole switchboard is a red flag to a careful builder and a landmine with a careless one.

When not to lump-sum a renovation

Lump sums are appropriate when the scope is visible, the access is promised, the board is known, and the client’s habit of changing their mind is known. Plenty of jobs meet that test. A new circuit in a new plasterboard wall, a solar isolator on a documented roof, a like-for-like hot-water circuit with the old one still in place.

Refuse a lump sum, or fence it hard, when:

The building is old and the walls are live archaeology.

The owner is still deciding where the lights go.

The kitchen is being designed by Instagram.

You are not allowed to isolate during an inspection.

The “electrical” includes data, access control and “whatever the cabinetmaker needs”.

There is a sitting tenant.

The last contractor left without a certificate.

In those cases a better offer is a staged price: investigation and making-safe; then a firm price for the defined works; then rates for the rest. Clients who want a single number for an unknown house are asking you to buy their uncertainty. Your job is to sell electricity work, not insurance.

If you do lump-sum, list the exclusions as if you expect a stranger to read them in a dispute. “Existing defects, hidden wiring, asbestos, DNSP charges, painting, plaster, fixtures not on the schedule, attendance beyond N visits, work outside ordinary hours.” Dull lists prevent interesting arguments.

Cash flow is part of the price

A profitable job that pays in ninety days can still sink a small contractor. Materials on your account, labour this week, a builder who pays when the client pays them — that chain is how vans get sold.

Put a deposit on anything with a materials order you cannot return. Put a progress claim at board-complete, not only at practical completion. Put a retention conversation in the open if the builder wants one: how much, how long, and what “complete” means for electrical work. A certificate of compliance issued is a stronger definition than “when the painter is happy”.

Do not finance a client’s lighting package because a supplier offered you thirty days and the builder offered you sixty. The difference is your overdraft.

If a job is large enough to hurt you, it is large enough for written terms. The Australian Consumer Law and the security-of-payment legislation in your state are there. They are not automatic. You have to issue the right payment claim at the right time. Learn the local Act or pay someone who has.

Quoting isolation time

Isolation is work. On a house it may be ten minutes and a tag. On a small commercial three-phase site it may be a letter to tenants, a Sunday morning, a test for dead, and a second person. On an industrial site it may be a permit, a group lock box and a production meeting.

Put isolation on the quote when it is not trivial. Include:

Who is isolating.

How long you expect it to take, including reinstatement.

Whether a second licensed person is required.

What you will do if the plant cannot be isolated on the day.

Whether live work is excluded — it should be.

Clients think isolation is a switch. You know it is a method. The isolation and lockout article is the method. The quote is where the method gets a number.

If the client will not pay for isolation time, they are asking you to rush the part of the job that keeps people alive. That is a job to walk away from, not a job to do faster.

Labour, awards and the number you do not invent

If you employ anyone, the Electrical, Electronic and Communications Contracting Award and the Fair Work system sit under your labour cost. Allowances, travel, overtime, and apprentice rates change. Do not copy a percentage from a Facebook group and call it your on-cost. Build your on-cost from superannuation, workers’ compensation, leave, tools, non-chargeable time and the insurance you actually carry. Then add a margin that keeps the business alive.

If you are pricing against a labourer who is “helping” on the tools, you are also pricing a licensing and WHS problem. Unlicensed electrical work is not a cheap labour strategy. It is a way to lose the contractor licence that lets you quote at all.

Do not use a published tender threshold, a council panel rate or a mate’s hourly figure as if it were a rule of the industry. Those numbers, when they exist, belong to a document that has a date. Your number belongs to your books.

A quoting checklist that keeps variations honest

• Open the board, or write that you have not and what that does to the price.
• List preliminaries: induction, access, plant, waste, after-hours, inspections.
• State how many attendances are included and the cost of another.
• Separate PC items, provisional sums and the firm scope. Give conversion rules.
• Exclude hidden defects, asbestos, DNSP charges and painting unless you have priced them.
• Put isolation time on the page when isolation is more than a main switch at the front door.
• Set deposit, progress claims and payment periods that match your cash.
• Check current award and Fair Work obligations before you lock a labour rate for employed staff.
• Write the variation clause. Do not start extras on a nod.
• If the renovation is unknown, offer a stage, not a lump sum.

A quote is a promise. A variation is an admission that the promise was incomplete. Make the first document do more of the work, and the second document will not have to save the job.