Guys,
Having been in this business for almost 50 years, I have learned that the
quality of a Fire Sprinkler job begins with Quality Design. I was on the
"Board" for almost 10 years before I moved on to Sales, Management and later
Ownership.
My start in Design gave me a great foundation to have the success that I have
had. I don't mind paying more for a complete Design Job with tie down
dimensions and proper routing of piping with the installer in mind.
I for one will walk away from a job that I can't get a decent price for...a
price that will allow me to pay the people at the foundation of the job...the
Designers and Fitters, to do the best job they can.
I closely review all shop drawings that come thru our company and don't
hesitate to use the highest quality people I can find.
That has always been my policy and always will.
Certified Lower Keys Plumbing and FireKey West, Florida
John W. Farabee, Manager and License HolderFire Protection Division
561-707-5150
On Tuesday, December 28, 2021, 03:32:41 PM EST, Steve Leyton via
Sprinklerforum <sprinklerforum@lists.firesprinkler.org> wrote:
As long as I'm on a roll, I submitted a proposal last week on a site fire main
project that's off the grid in the desert east of San Diego. The proposal
request came from the Civil Engineer who's already signed up and on board, but
they recently realized that the FP infrastructure is beyond their capabilities.
It's a battery farm for the regional utility corporate parent, with
approximately 2 million SF of lithium battery stacks in 100,000 sq. ft. modular
buildings. Water supply will be tapped from an adjacent canal, stored in 3
large tanks, then pumped into 3.5 miles of 8" or 10" pipe to supply 43 hydrants
and an unknown number of building systems, since service laterals to the
buildings weren't shown on the concept site utilities plan. Probably because
the basis of design for suppression systems hasn't been conceived yet. Number
of, size and configuration of pumps unknown, whether the utility is
self-insured or not, has existing loss prevention standards or not, how they
intend to use the 20 accessory buildings shown on the plans in addition to the
battery housing, all still not known.
We estimate a 9-12 month design schedule with a meeting a week, and included 12
trips to the site during construction at 2 hours each way from San Diego to the
site. So we guessed at a design fee of 2.5% of an ROM cost for the work and
they literally came back with, "What can we get for $35-50,000?"
I dunno, a late-model used car?
SL
-----Original Message-----
From: Sprinklerforum <sprinklerforum-boun...@lists.firesprinkler.org> On Behalf
Of Fpdcdesign via Sprinklerforum
Sent: Tuesday, December 28, 2021 12:16 PM
To: Sprinklerforum <sprinklerforum@lists.firesprinkler.org>
Cc: Fpdcdesign <fpdcdes...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Airing of Grievances
Steve, that stuff happens on the other coast, too. A few years ago I had
someone come in at half the design price I quoted. I told the client I can’t
come near that, so the other guy got it. A few months later, the low bidder
called to hire me to get the plan through review. I told him I know what he
took the job for and he can’t afford me.
We have another guy out here, who may or may not be NICET certified, who bids
on the spec jobs at shop drawing prices. He has a McDonalds PE (buy him
breakfast at McDonalds and he will stamp your drawings) that will stamp them
and everyone thinks they are getting PE specified plans. It has effectively
killed making money in any small/medium sized spec jobs. The big stuff goes to
the big name firms so guys like me are SOL.
Todd G Williams, PE
Fire Protection Design/Consulting
Stonington, CT
860-535-2080 (tel:860-535-2080) (ofc)
860-554-7054 (tel:860-554-7054) (fax)
860-608-4559 (tel:860-608-4559) (cell)
>
> On Dec 28, 2021 at 2:45 PM, <Steve Leyton via Sprinklerforum
> (mailto:sprinklerforum@lists.firesprinkler.org)> wrote:
>
>
>
> Since it's Festivus season, I thought I'd share this with the group. Our
>firm is scaled and resourced as a consulting engineering business model and
>not a "free-lance" drafting/design service. As such, we have direct and
>overhead costs that push our fees to the limits of what contractors typically
>budget for design, so the majority of our work is for architects and
>developers. But there's a market for what we're doing and I know that our fees
>are fair for the service we provide. Still, we have tried to sharpen the
>pencil the past couple years because we've partnered with contractors on a few
>design/build projects and I know that there's huge opportunity for us as 3rd
>party designers working under the FP sub. So I was intrigued by a proposal
>request that we got last week for a mixed use podium project in Los Angeles
>where the contractor reached out and dangled this and another project, the
>other one being a 20-story high-rise. To set the table, the building is
>6-stories over two basement levels and about 165,000 GSF. It will utilize
>steel pipe throughout as it's poured in place concrete with cloud ceilings and
>no ceilings in the dwelling units. Three standpipe risers, one of which is
>partial height so multiple SP and sprinkler calc's. It will also require
>booster pump for which no designated room or space is shown on the plans and
>one side of the building requires water curtains at balcony openings that I
>assume are too close to the adjacent building or property line, so another
>calc there plus the additional drafting and coordination. And no two floors
>are typical to one another. Although it's still not rocket science, there's
>some thinking involved and for those not familiar with SoCal, wages in LA are
>probably in the top 5 nationwide and City of LA is a wicked AHJ. So I'm
>guessing that the FP contract is probably worth between $650-$700K. Oh, and of
>course they need this absolutely, positively ASAP. We looked at every task,
>optimized the hours for repetitions in the floor plans where we could, and
>crunched the numbers. Our proposed fee was 18¢/SF and I thought that was fair.
>The client came back and said that he's got another proposal for $5,000. Five.
>Thousand. Dollars. Now some of you may think I'm the one with the wrong
>perspective but here's the thing: our industry continues to basically give
>away its collective expertise and drag the value of its own work down. No
>right-minded person would take this project at that fee in this market and
>this contractor is going to get their ass handed to them in both plan review
>and inspection, guaranteed. When I mentioned the water curtains, the guy even
>said that there weren't any that he saw and he didn't include any "extras". He
>doesn't have a flow test yet, doesn't have the CAD backgrounds ready to send
>and isn't even familiar with the complete set of work. On top of that, he's
>inclined to accept the $5K proposal but wondered if I could cut my fee in half
>because he, "...would rather deal with a firm like (ours)..." than a
>moonlighter. He actually seems like a pretty nice guy, albeit one who's now
>stuck in a mud bog up to his waist and wearing sunglasses at night. My primary
>hope for 2022 is that our country stops fighting with itself. My second one is
>that Covid somehow gets out of the way. But my third hope is that our industry
>wakes up to the fact that what we do takes a certain amount of time and energy
>to learn what we know and that underselling (or in some cases giving away) our
>intellectual property is foolish and simply perpetuates the downward pressure
>on our market that's applied by developers, contractors and architects who
>know that if they kick far enough down the alley, they'll find someone who's
>willing to go CHEAP on fire protection for most projects. Contractors who take
>on design/build projects have all the liability and risk, and navigating the
>plan review and inspection processes is harder than ever and will only get
>more rigorous. Every year we hear the same complaints: "We can't find enough
>designers"; "The quality of design work is bad industry wide"; "We're turning
>town work because we can't get it designed." If you're putting 10-15¢ per SF
>on the sheet for design, that's your prerogative, but you don't get to
>complain about the lack or quality of resources if you do. Fire protection
>design is a professional service, so paying a fair wage and providing benefits
>and furnishing the hardware/software resources to design technicians is
>essential to raising the standard of care and that all costs money. If our
>industry isn't willing to pay itself fairly for professional caliber design,
>then why should the owners of the built environment? Happy New Year to y'all
>and thanks to AFSA for continuing to foster this terrific venue for the
>exchange of ideas. Steve _______________________________________________
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