Curb Production Rate

Vinny

We have an in house mason crew for installing belgium block(cobble stone) curb. We set them in concrete footing with mortared joints. We install jumbos, regulation, and antique style.

Does anyone else out there do any amount of this for driveways and if so can you give me an honest level of your usual production capability. Please describe your crew strength and technique.

I use to have a sub do this work and the labor costs were well controlled that way, but we were using him every day sometimes 2 or 3 crews at a pop. So I brought 1 crew in house and some jobs went well while others doged out. Now I will need to do a 1 year review with the crew chief and I want to be fair.

I would also appreciate any info on flat work also like aprons or border ribbons.

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Roccies Asphalt Paving
The Right Way Driveway Company
If you say you cant, your a loser. If you say you wont, your a quiter. Which one do you want to be?

Vinny

OK, no one out there does this?

Moderator please move this to the paving forum.

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Roccies Asphalt Paving
The Right Way Driveway Company
If you say you cant, your a loser. If you say you wont, your a quiter. Which one do you want to be?

joesauers

Hi Vinny, just read your thread. This past year we did about 6 jobs along the lines of what you are talking. We always use the jumbo cobblestones. We vary the direction we lay them (horizontal or vertical) depending on customer request of reveal, whether the driveway is going to be overlayed, or removed and replaced. We normally do smaller residences here, on average 50-150' of edging. I have 3 guys that work together well on this type of work, so that is the crew size. We normally dig a trench to lay the cobblestone in by hand, and throw the soil into the bobcat bucket. Using a backhoe makes too much of a mess, and we do not own a mini-x. We have rented occasionally for the larger cobblestone jobs. For production, our 3 man crew installed 60' in 2.5 hours = 7.5 man hours. We also did a 120' job in 10.5 man hours, which only includes the pouring and setting. We also did a 230' job in 16 man hours. Remember, none of those numbers included the excavation or prep, only pouring and setting the blocks. Also, none of those include mortaring. Not many of our customers request mortar. Hope that helps, let me know if you need any clarification. Oh by the way, my starting point for pricing this work is around $35.00 / per foot. Sometimes more depending on conditions. I'd be interested in hearing your technique for keeping the blocks perfectly straight on a long run. We use stringlines set at the edge of the driveway at the top of the block, but sometimes we have problems with the stones settling in the concrete or shifting after they have been set.

Vinny

Joe, thanks for the info. It will be helpful. Let me get a couple of things clear though.

I too use a 3 man crew and mostly hand dig. I wont normaly have a machine on the job. It seems just as easy to toss it right up onto the mason dump. After the trench is dug we set the lines, mix concrete, dip the blocks in a slurry of water and portland, then set the stone. I rarely set them vertical unless its comercial and we're trying to get a higher reveal. Almost always horizontal yeilding a 3 1/2 to 4 inch reveal after paving. Then we install a 3/8 rebar in the back and cope over it. then we joint with mortar using batter bags. On a typical 200 or 300 lft job we get, your gonna love this, we get 16.50 per lft. And have great difficulty selling at that level. We get more for less, like i sold a 100 lft job at the end of the season for 21 per lft and we get a real premium for very small jobs but we still have guys that sell at 12 +/- all the time. The curbs and aprons are real popular here and I think the abuse of the market keeps the price down. The competition may not do all we do, but they sell. Obviously we need to toot our horn a little louder.

Getting back to your production, from what you said, once your set up and going after the dig is done and the lines are set your installing about 10 to 15 lft per hour with the 3 man crew. Do you have any recalection what the rest of the work took? Anything will be helpfull here. I never timed just the actual setting, though now, I wish I had. I think the one major problem we are having is time to set up, get material and get under way. Maybe if I had that info I could figure these jobs based in 2 parts. One price for just getting out the gate and another for the actual work. I may just guestimate based on de briefs and the info i have in the mean time. I gotta be more careful going forward, thats all I know right now.

As for the problems your having, it sounds as though you may be making the concrete too wet. We set a line for layout that gives the hieght and direction of the stone. We pretty much make a mix that is very stiff. very little water. Thats one of the resons we dip the stone in a slurry of water and portland, then do the joints. If you make your concrete too wet your mix penitrates the skin of the dry stone giving you the bond you want but you get the shift and settle as you set succeeding stones. If you mix stiff it shouldnt happen. Maybe your trench is too deep and you have too much concrete. We use maybe 3 or 4 inches of mix below the stone. I dont think you need any more than that because theres no down pressure on the curb, only lateral when thier hit. Thats why I like the joints and rebar. It ties it all together. The other plus's of mortar joints is when you pave you dont get a clean up nigtmare when the asphalt fills the space thats left when you dont install a joint and you dont get weeds growin in between the blocks creating a weed whacking fiasco for the home owner. We,re also very careful not to let the concrete on the front side of the stone(asphalt side) to get higher than the elevation of the top of the process gravel. If the concrete is too high you not only wont be able to get adiquit coverage with the aspahlt but you will also get a roller or compactor line right at that spot.

__________________
Roccies Asphalt Paving
The Right Way Driveway Company
If you say you cant, your a loser. If you say you wont, your a quiter. Which one do you want to be?

joesauers

Wow, it's great to hear some of this info and discuss this! I checked out your website and it looks like you guys do awesome work. When you put the 3/8 rebar behind the stone, what lengths are you using? I suppose I could do that even if I don't mortar the joints, providing the rebar is below finish grade. I am in more of a middle class area of town so not a whole lot of people request them, or if they do, can't afford them. Although, the ones I install are always the talk of the neighborhood!

Regarding production, I will look and see if I have the numbers for hand excavation and setup. One thing that I always do is have the stones delivered the day before, or in the back of our truck and ready to go. That is a simple one man job to pickup the night before and you don't waste time the next morning when it is time to get to work. I am also working on having more materials delivered to jobsites in the future. For $40-$50, it saves a lot of hassle and actually saves you money, providing you are organized and can remember to call in the order days ahead of time to insure it will be there when you need it. This past year I tried to track as much as possible. For example, if we were tearing out a drive, widening it, and base and top; I tried to count the man hours for each step. I have also done that for my landscape division. Now I am creating some spreadsheets so my salesman can measure everything, plug in the numbers, I can review it, and then adjust or go with it. A little more difficult than it sounds, but I feel it is worth it.

Regarding the concrete, you are right, it is probabaly too wet. We are having it delivered via concrete truck, to save time on the mixing. We simply have the concrete truck pull up, normally wheel barrow the mix into the trench to keep the mess down, get the truck out, and we start laying. We have to be careful not to install more than a few yards of concrete at once so it doesn't dry too fast. Obviously not a problem for small jobs. My guys hate hand mixing, and I know it takes a long time. Do you guys hand mix? I normally do not put more than 3-4'' of mix under the stones. I think we just need it to be drier. I agree the mortar joints look nicer ( i did that at my house). Regarding concrete finish height, I have done it in the past to make it level with the finished asphalt base course, and that works ok.

Just a side note - On my first cobblestone job, which was my house, my buddy and I came up with the idea to form out with 2X6's where we wanted the concrete foundation. (We widened all edges of the driveway a few feet). He then made a handheld "jig" (block setter) out of wood that we placed on top of the front form, and it automatically set the block at the correct height and location. Very hard to explain, but it worked well. Although, I found that just using a string line works good as long as you are careful.

joesauers

Vinny, I just stopped in my office and have a little bit of additional production info for you. Our crew has dug out by hand, 80' long X 1' deep X 9'' wide in 16.5 man hours. That is throwing the soil into the mason dump. Additionally, I always factor for a half hour travel to and from the job, even if it is right around the corner, to help cover the time of loading and unloading tools. For example, for a 3 man crew, I add 3 man hours to my bid for every day the job will take. Also, I always add at least 1 man hour for any trip to pickup materials. In your earlier post, you mentioned that you definitely need to be more careful going forward, are you finding the curb jobs to be less profitable than paving?

Vinny

Never mind much of whats on the web site. They incorrectly launched a prototype that had example info in it for the most part and needs a bunch of changes I am only now working on. It will inevitably have our educational (marketing) dvd imbedded in it.

__________________
Roccies Asphalt Paving
The Right Way Driveway Company
If you say you cant, your a loser. If you say you wont, your a quiter. Which one do you want to be?

Vinny

Alright, so then would it be fare to say on a trench for belgium block which is only 1/2 that depth your doing almost 30 lft per hour? Meshed up with what you and i talked about before(the 10 to 15 lft per hour to install), that sounds like your doing 10 lft per hour complete but not including mobilization or material aquisision.

If thats the case, I would say for some of my jobs we are right there. I havent completed my spread sheet break down yet, but I would say from the surface information I have thats what I get too. But then I have some jobs that are just SHI&.

I am looking for the same margin range in the masonry as i am in my paving. 45%. Thats what I need to make it all worth while. I have a couple of real big ticket masonry ones where I ended up with 50% and i have some jobs, mostly smaller, that are in the 20% range. Heck, I can get that using a sub. Thats whay I brought it in house was to boost gross profit $.

Let me check that aginst what I have and I'll let you know

__________________
Roccies Asphalt Paving
The Right Way Driveway Company
If you say you cant, your a loser. If you say you wont, your a quiter. Which one do you want to be?

joesauers

Vinny, wouldn't it be closer to 15-20' per man hour for excavation and installation? Not sure how you came to your number of 10' per hour, unless you are figuring that you guys do not excavate as much as us. None the less, this is all a good starting point for you. Remember, my numbers do not include the mortaring. Do you have any rough numbers for that part of the job that I could make a note of? Keep in mind, everything I post is related to "man hours". For example, 15' per man hour = 45' per hour for a 3 man crew. Are you using any kind of computerized estimating program right now? I am researching different ones and want to get something in place before March.

Vinny

Maybe i did get confused on the hours vs man hours. If it is 15 to 20 per hour thats where I'd need to be consistantly to make a 45 % margin. I dont think its unlikely because I think thats what my sub does. Like I said, I am doing a spread shett to show costs, margin, sell price per unit and actual install rates. Then I will try to get a sense as to if there is a common denominator. Some answer that seems to make rhyme and reason.

We had an excell based estimating system that we did some modification on but it was still leaving too much for an inexperienced estimator to deal with trying to guess how long it may take a crew to do this or that. I cant teach someone what took me 23 years to learn. So I just purchased a new system designed for the roofing siding and window industry and we are modifying it for us. It looks like its gonna work good but its such a pain to get it all set up.

When it is done though we will be doing the initial client info, the pre aproach letter, lead/ estimate sheet, estimate, proposal, and job costing. With all this info cataloged and set up in a data base we can run managment reports from the system directly.

Added: OK, I see it, your install averages 35lft per hour and digging at 6" deep would net you 30 lft per hour so yea, thats like 15 lft per hour, or 120 lft per day. I still need to get my initial set up and get going factor squared away. BTW, no I dont have a number for jointing alone. With the batter bags the pour goes fast but you gotta wait to finish them a little so the dry a little. I have a sheet on 1 job for it at my office. I'll look it up tommorrow and give you a shout.

__________________
Roccies Asphalt Paving
The Right Way Driveway Company
If you say you cant, your a loser. If you say you wont, your a quiter. Which one do you want to be?

joesauers

Yea I always figure in man hours. That way, if one guy doesn't show up in for the day, the other 2 guys can still comprehend that they have 20 hours to get it done, if you know what I mean. I have been using quickbooks pro for all book keeping and record keeping, but it is not designed to produce estimates the way we want to. I am looking at www.quickestimator.com . Plan to purchase soon. I talked to the owner, he says you can program all sorts of production info. For example, you tell it that you can hand excavate 20' / man hour. Then, when you have a 80' job, it will automatically put 4 man hours in the bid for excavation. The list will be huge and will take a lot of time this winter to program, but that is the gist of it.

Additionally, I experimented with a performance incentive plan last year with my crew. I would show them how many hours I figured for in the bid, and if they beat it, they got extra. It worked so-so, but my problem was that I didn't break down everything into hours on the small jobs, and it kind of went by the wayside. I intend on restarting that in the spring though.