What is "job trailer mobilization"?

^ same question

Some things were very transparent in our billing and some things we just had to trust our builder, who had/has great reviews and is liked by everyone who has worked with him.

With a T&M contract, yes it is normal and customary.

mobilazation. placing the job trailer on site.

The job trailer is a necessary expense related to the build.

Because it’s a T&M contract, yes, I would expect that to be a billed expense. Could include the time to move it and place it, but could also include the time to restock supplies in the trailer.

I agree with Minardi. With time and materials, there is no incentive for your GC to be efficient with their time or cost. Forgot they needed to get something from a supplier? No problem going to go pick it up and charging you for all that time. We did cost plus, and in that scenario, it didn't cost us any extra for the GC to go run around time to get wood samples, miscellaneous parts that subs forgot to bring when they did have, etc. I would strongly caution against continuing with a time and materials contract. With our cost plus contract, we had a full bid of everything before we signed, understanding that there were some allowances that we might exceed as well as some trades whi might increase their costs due to inflation. The GC made a fixed percentage on top.

Yes, we were also cost plus for our build.

Maybe OP will clarify if that is what they meant?

OP here...yes I do have a cost plus contract, my mistake. I do have a Cost Allowance as part of the contract. When the GC bills me there are always hours here and there for "project management" with usually a brief description of what he was doing for those hours. It is my chore to figure out which line item in the Cost Allowances those hours should accrue to. I realize there is flexibility in the Cost Allowances as some lines will end up less, and some more. I just want to check in to see that hours he lists under "Project Management" are legit. We are still early in the relationship and I am in Trust but Verify mode.

I just wish that all those years I had been working so that I can afford this project in my retirement that I had been charging my employers for the time it took for me to show up with the tools necessary to do the job.

Thank you all for your help!

Your contractor must be paid for his risk and his lost opportunity costs, neither of which an employee has.

It's important with any cost-plus contract to define what goes in the "cost" category and what goes in the "plus" category. Some builders charge on-site supervision in the "cost" category. I consider that as part of my project management fee. Ditto for "project management."

You'll be well served to consult a local attorney experienced in cost-plus residential construction contracts and who know local builder's track records. Helping you minimize the risk of choosing a bad builder is likely to be more valuable than a comprehensive, well-worded contract.

"I realize there is flexibility in the Cost Allowances as some lines will end up less, and some more."

You hope. The more you have selected on the front end the less overages will be, but unless you were super diligent upfront in the selection and budgeting stage do not expect many (if any) to be under.

I’m about to start building a house and my builder is doing the job for a fixed fee. It’s about 12% of what the cost to build should be, and even though I’m going to try to reduce the estimated cost to build through the judicious selection of materials, thus hopefully not going to much over, I am very happy that he is doing it this way. We built a cost plus house 20 years ago and discovered that the builder was getting the subs to pad the bids, then getting the kickbacks on those differences, as well as adding the “plus” percentage to my bill based on the inflated bids. We thought we had minimized the chances of monkey business by specifying in our contract that he had to get a minimum of 3 bids for certain high ticket items. He fraudulently adjusted those bids, or claimed no one else would do the work, etc., etc. So much of building is a leap of faith. Good luck, may it be as frustration free as possible, and I hope you love your new house when it’s done!

I would only work with a builder that incudes project management in the "plus" category, like Charles Ross Homes. It doesn't make sense to me to pay for project management as an additional cost, when that is a core part of what the GC / Builder should be doing. Fixed fee is probably best for the homeowner, but it introduces some risk to the builder. For instance, we chose some things that ended up costing the builder a lot more time and energy to coordinate with subs. Because we had a cost plus contract, our builder got paid a bit more, but probably not as much as he wished.

The used to be a book series: xx for dummies. I recommend the books, try contracting for dummies, home building for dummies.

There are also the Federal Acqusion Regulation. Federal Goverment Rules on contracting with the Federal Government. Many builders emulate those rules.

These will help you understand, review billings. You already have a contract, learn what that means, or do not get involved in the minutia.

I can only share our build experience for reference.

We had a cost plus contract 15%. We paid an additional project management fee, 10%, on top of that. We also paid some employees hourly like site manager, labourer, design.

We got a copy of every single invoice and also time sheet. Every two weeks everything was sent to us.

Wow. Margins for fixed-price construction contracts with reputable custom home builders in our market are 20%+/- Management fees for cost-plus contracts are less than that.

We had quotes from two other builders and even with the higher mark up and fees we ended up under either of their estimates with the builder we chose.

I wonder if my comment was confusing. I don’t have a fixed fee for the cost of my house, just a fixed fee from my GC to manage the project. If I save money on various “ ingredients” his fee doesn’t go down, nor does it go up if the price of other things, i.e. flooring or my appliances rise by 10%. This gives me some peace of mind, and is nice to know that he won’t be upset if I try to save some money by cutting down on some finishes as it won’t effect what he earns.I had pricing from three builders, the costs to actually build the house were all very close, my architect worked up allowances on many items to make sure we were comparing apples to apples. Most of the difference in the builders were in their fees; one of them was charging “overhead” based on the estimated cost to build, and then adding the cost plus percentage of 15% onto that as well as everything else, which seemed excessive. Wish I had a firm cost to build, the uncertainty and the huge rise in costs since we first met with the architect in 2020 is causing a lot of anxiety.

Of course it’s uncertain. It is for your builder too. It costs what it costs and that will fluctuate a bit.

Our house was custom, so there was no time to do all the upfront selections for fixed price and get the build started as soon as possible back in 2020, so we did cost plus.

My builder stopped offering fixed price contracts sometime in 2021. I know he lost one project because of it, but he said with all the crazy stuff that was happening he just couldn't take on the risk.

One of our neighbors built with a large builder and I'm sure they started with a fixed price contract. Covid happened during the build and it then took 3 years to get the house completed. The builder was sending crews to the projects that were making money at current higher prices and not the one project that was losing money with a 2019 fixed price!