Assessment of an offer for earthworks

In December, we installed about 780 tons of frost protection gravel as a foundation. Since the clay soil was not suitable, it had to be completely removed under the house to a depth of 90 cm and refilled; additionally, the area for the scaffolding around the outside, the crane stand, and the garage was included. We only paid about €16 net per ton for the material without installation/compaction. However, we also had offers of almost €20/t :oops:

Yes. That's all fine. But then the question arises, who installs and compacts the 780t. If you know someone who does that, great. But that also has to be coordinated, right. You can't just dump 30 truckloads of gravel and then have the excavator come and spread it. It has to be done gradually, because it can only be compacted layer by layer... even at the risk that the excavator operator sometimes waits 20 minutes for the next truck and still charges for this time. And when the gravel is compacted, the excavator just stands there, but still has to be paid for, because it is there and can't be used elsewhere... It's not as simple as the average office worker imagines... he can read his emails or do some small task on the side when the main project isn't progressing. An excavator operator can't do that.

Sure, you can't do without an excavator. However, this is accounted for separately as total excavator costs and cannot simply be broken down and allocated only to [Schotter] and compaction ;)

In the end, it won't make much difference whether you include it in the gravel price or list it separately.

By the way, WilderSüden also built at times when prices were moderate and there was no 8% annual inflation and no Ukraine war. That also always has to be mentioned when one wants to classify their prices.

The price is from April 2023... you don't even want to hear the offers from 2021 today...

By the way, no one claims that the groundworker should install it for free. He is welcome to charge for the excavator and operator per hour. That probably amounts to around €1500 net per day for both. With the billing method, a significantly fairer price results for the client, even if the groundworker distributes and compacts gravel for 3 days.