Apply Surcharges for Difficulties

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How to charge for Landscaping, Retaining walls, Patios and Outdoor Construction

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What happens here

Not all projects are straightforward, even if they share similar core elements. For projects with unique challenges that significantly increase time or complexity beyond your standard calculations, apply a surcharge. This ensures that difficult conditions, such as extremely tight access (e.g., a narrow path between a house and a wooden retaining wall, blocked by a fence or deck) or mandatory tree removal that cannot be avoided, are appropriately compensated. Calculate the extra time and resources required for these specific difficulties, convert them into a cost, and add them as a surcharge to your standard per-square-foot or flat-rate pricing. For example, if a standard retaining wall is $20 per square foot, difficult access might increase it to $25 or $28 per square foot.

Goal: Ensure adequate compensation for unforeseen or complex project conditions.

Tools and materials

Pricing formula — Calculating base cost and applying surcharges
Trees N/A — Obstruction requiring removal due to roots or proximity to the project

What they say

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the choice up to them. All right, Tim's got us looking at one of the easiest jobs that there is to bid, which is our retaining wall. But in this case, this wall is got really crappy access. What I want you guys to do is start to look at what jobs do you get over and over and over again and start to figure out the numbers that you're comfortable with and then you can almost boilerplate those numbers, but you have to base them contingent upon a few things. In this case, it's access, isn't it? So, here's our access. None. We got a fence and we got a wall and we got to fix it. So, if we have a stock price set in mind, a price per square foot for a retaining wall, we'd simply measure this wall out and then we would add a search charge in this case for the uh the difficulty with the access. So, let's just say, now this isn't a real number, but let's just say it's $20 a square foot to remove and replace the retaining wall with equipment given good access. Because we don't have good access, we're then going to say, "Hey, you know what? We're going to calculate the excavation and the removal separately, see what that comes out to, and then we can flip that back into the price per square foot." So, if we normally do a retaining wall for $20 a square foot, in this case, this wall may be $25 a square foot or 28. All right, one way of doing it. There's other ways we can look at this project, but we might as well boil it down into creating a formula that you can apply over and over again with slight modifications. This looks like it's all hand labor unless this fence can get moved, which on the other side of this fence is a deck. So, I don't think you can get this moved unless we take the deck out. So, even if you do remove this fence, cuz we literally go stand down there and put your arms out. Let's see how much. But you've got a really wide arm span, Tim. T-Rex. No, that's that's like 3 ft. And then tree removal. We've got to take these trees down. can't build with these trees above the wall. So, there's another obstacle in our way. You put a brand new wall right in front of that tree within I don't know how many years you think before the roots start pushing the new wall out. You couldn't even do it. Yeah. You'd have roots in your way. You have to chop them all out. Yeah. And then you don't have room for your drainage aggregate. So, you got to

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