Quote Systems for Scaffolders
The price is not the price. The weekly hire rate is
A quote with a clock in it
An engineer-designed complex scaffold is £8,000. An internal birdcage, £4,000. A commercial system scaffold, £1,500. A domestic tube and fitting job, £850. A chimney scaffold, £600.
Every one of those numbers is really two numbers, and the second one is where scaffolding businesses make or lose their year.
There is the erection and dismantle — labour, transport, materials on and off. And there is the hire period, which is the weeks your kit stands on somebody’s building instead of earning on another job.
A quote that states only the total is ambiguous about the thing that matters most. The contractor reads it as a fixed price for a job. You priced it assuming six weeks. The roof takes eleven because the tiles were late, and now there is a conversation about whether the extra five weeks were included, which the contractor believes they were.
That conversation happens on a significant proportion of jobs in this trade and it is entirely a quoting problem. The work was done properly. The document simply did not say what the price bought.
What has to be on the page
The hire period, in weeks, stated explicitly. Not implied by the programme. Written as a number.
The extension rate, per week, stated at the same time. This is the single most important line in a scaffolding quote and it is the one most often left off. Agreed in advance it is a rate; raised in week seven it is a dispute.
Erection and dismantle separated from hire. So a contractor can see what they are paying for labour and what for time.
Adaptations and alterations priced. Lifts added, boards moved, a section struck for a delivery, hop-ups. These happen on nearly every commercial job and are usually done as favours until somebody counts them up.
Design, drawings and inspections itemised where they apply. Engineer-designed work carries a real design cost and it should be visible rather than buried.
Permits and licensing. Who applies, who pays, what happens if the licence period is exceeded because the job overran.
Standing time and access. What happens when your gang arrives and cannot start because the site is not ready. Every scaffolder loses days to this and almost none of them charge for it, because it was never in the document.
The ratio
An engineer-designed scaffold is £8,000. Our Booked package is £99 a month — £1,188 a year. One such job covers nearly seven years.
On hire periods: kit standing five weeks longer than priced, on three jobs a year, is fifteen weeks of materials earning nothing — against a weekly extension rate that would have covered it several times over. That is not a pricing problem, it is a wording problem, and it is the largest recoverable number in most scaffolding businesses.
What we’d actually build
A quote template that separates erection, hire and extension as three visible figures.
A rate card by scaffold type — system, tube and fitting, birdcage, chimney — with weekly hire rates behind it.
An adaptations schedule, so a lift added mid-job is a priced item rather than a favour.
Standing time and access wording, which is the clause that turns wasted mornings into invoices.
A same-day tender response format, because contracts managers under programme pressure frequently decide on whoever answered properly first.
A follow-up routine on every price issued, since construction programmes move and a no in March is often a yes in May.
What good looks like at twelve months
- Hire periods and extension rates on every document
- Adaptations charged rather than absorbed
- Standing time recoverable because it was written down
- Tender responses out the same day
- A win rate by contractor, so you can see who is actually placing work and at what margin
The mistakes we see most
No stated hire period. The commonest and most expensive omission in the trade.
No extension rate. It converts a routine overrun into an argument with somebody you want to work for again.
Free adaptations. Three or four small alterations a job, across a year, is a substantial amount of unpaid labour.
Slow tender responses. Same-day is frequently what decides it between two firms who could both do the work.
The first ninety days
Weeks 1–4. The rate card and the quote structure separating erection, hire and extension.
Weeks 5–8. Adaptations schedule, standing time and permit wording, which is where the recovery is.
Weeks 9–12. Same-day tender response format and a follow-up routine on issued prices.
At ninety days the measure is whether every live job has a stated hire period and an agreed weekly extension rate. On most firms’ current jobs, very few do.
Where this lands in Gaffer
Quote templates by scaffold type hold your erection and weekly hire rates, so a tender response goes out the same afternoon rather than the following week.
Because jobs carry erection and strike dates, a hire period running past what was quoted is visible while it is happening rather than at invoicing.
And with adaptations recorded against the job, the alterations that used to be absorbed appear on the account as the priced items they are.
Pricing the domestic job like a domestic job
Everything above is written for commercial work, because that is where the money is. The £600 chimney scaffold needs an entirely different quoting approach and giving it the commercial one loses the job.
A homeowner does not understand hire periods, extension rates, adaptations or standing time. Presented with a document containing all of them, they conclude that the price is not really the price and that they are about to be charged for things they cannot predict. They then ring somebody who said “six hundred pounds, up Monday, down when the roofer’s finished”.
So the domestic quote is short and inclusive. One figure. A stated period generous enough to cover a normal roofing job — four weeks rather than two — with a plainly worded rate if it goes beyond that. What is included: erection, hire for the period, dismantle, and the licence if the pavement is affected. What the customer needs to do: keep the access clear, tell you when the roofer is finished.
Half a page, no schedules, no exclusions list that reads like a contract.
It is the same business, the same kit and the same gang, and it needs the opposite document. Most scaffolders have one template and use it for both, which is why the domestic work either loses on presentation or gets priced with a caution the job never needed.
Questions scaffolders ask
Will contractors accept an extension rate? They expect one. It is standard commercial practice and its absence is what causes the argument.
What hire period should I quote? The programme plus a realistic allowance, stated plainly, with the weekly rate after it.
Should I charge for small adaptations? Price them. Whether you waive some is then a decision you make rather than an assumption they make.
How fast should a tender go back? Same day where possible. In this trade speed of response is frequently worth more than a small difference in price.
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