Calculator
Concreting cost per m², built up properly
The record
- Checked by
- Carl Winson
- Built from
- CIJC Working Rule Agreement
- Wage date
- 20 July 2026
- Grades
- craft rate and general operative
The working
- 1 × tradesperson at £16.40
- £16.40
- 2 × labourer at £13.18
- £26.36
- Gang wage, per hour
- £42.76
- + 35% on top of wages
- £57.73
- × 8 hours on the tools
- £461.81 a day
- Oversite slab, 150mmready-mix in, levelled to rails and tamped£461.81 ÷ 70 m² × 1.20 = £7.92/m²
Benchmark
£7.92/m² labour
CIJC rates · tradesperson £16.40/hr + labourer £13.18/hr · gang of 1+2 · 35% on top · overheads and profit 20%
Materials, scaffold and supervision are not included in this rate.
What’s in this?
- Employer's National Insurance - 15% above £5,000 a year
- Holiday pay - 12.07%
- Pension, auto-enrolment minimum - 3%
- CITB levy - 0.35% of payroll
- Sick pay, training and employer's liability insurance - the remainder
- At 0% this is a CIS subcontractor's labour price - National Insurance, holiday and pension are then theirs to carry, not the job's.
The location range is authored, not measured - our tender data says what was bought where, not what labour costs there.
Price a whole job with this ratePut in the job size and your lump sums - scaffold, plant, skip, and get the job total.
The minimum starts at a day of the gang, priced - £554.17 - because travel, unloading and setting up make a day the honest floor. Type your own, or 0 for none.
Put a job size in and the total appears here.
A pour is committed the moment the truck arrives
Concreting is unlike every other trade on this site in one important way: you cannot stop halfway. Once ready-mix is discharging you are placing, levelling and finishing it whatever happens, and you are doing it before it goes off. There is no “we’ll finish it in the morning”.
That is why concrete gangs price a pour as a package rather than by the hour, and it is why the minimum charge on this card is not a nicety. A 20 m² slab is a fraction of a day of concreting and a whole day of a gang - they arrive, set up, wait for the truck, place it, finish it, clean the barrows and go home.
Why the gang is a finisher and two labourers
The benchmark gang is one tradesperson and two labourers, and the ratio is about throughput at the point of discharge. Concrete has to be moved, spread and tamped as fast as it comes off the truck; the finishing skill is one person’s job and the moving is everybody’s.
Barrowing changes it completely. If the truck can back up to the pour you are into it straight away; if it is fifty metres of barrow runs through a side gate, the same volume takes most of the day and you may want a fourth pair of hands on the card rather than a longer day.
What moves the output on a slab
- Access for the truck. The single biggest variable. Direct discharge, a chute, a pump or barrows are four different jobs at the same cubic metres.
- Finish. Tamped and left is quick. A float finish is slower. A power-floated finish means waiting for the slab to take weight and then going back over it - often into the evening, because the concrete decides when, not you.
- Weather. Frost and heavy rain both stop a pour outright, and hot weather brings the working time down sharply. A cancelled truck is still a charged truck.
- What is in the slab. Mesh, edge shuttering, insulation, a damp-proof membrane, service ducts - all of it is work before the pour and none of it is in this rate. Shuttering and mesh have their own cards.
Pricing a slab honestly
Put the area in the job section, add the plant and the ready-mix delivery as lump sums, and let the minimum charge do its job on anything small. The concrete itself is a material and sits outside the labour rate - as does the pump, if you need one, which on a tight site can be the largest single number on the job.
The honest way to quote a small pour is a day rate with the reasoning visible, and that is exactly what this card produces: the gang, the day, and the price it makes.
Questions people ask
How much concrete can a gang lay in a day?
Around 70 m² of 150mm oversite slab a day for a gang of one finisher and two labourers, placing ready-mix, levelling to rails and tamping. Direct discharge from the truck is what makes that figure possible - barrowing any distance, or pumping, changes it substantially.
Why do concreting firms charge a minimum for small pours?
Because a pour cannot be split across days. The gang travels, sets up, waits for the truck, places and finishes the concrete before it goes off, then cleans down - whether the slab is 20 m² or 70. The day is the unit, which is why the minimum charge on this calculator defaults to a priced day of the gang.
Does a concreting rate include the concrete?
No. Every rate on this site is labour only. Ready-mix, mesh, shuttering, membrane and insulation are materials or separate operations, shuttering and mesh have their own calculators, and a concrete pump, where a site needs one, is priced as a lump sum in the job section.
What is the difference between a tamped and a power-floated finish?
Tamped is a textured finish left off the tamping beam and is the quickest. A power-floated finish is a smooth, hard-wearing surface for a floor slab, and it needs the gang to wait for the concrete to take weight before floating it - which often means a long or split day, decided by the concrete rather than the programme.
Can you pour concrete in cold weather?
Not in frost, and not sensibly when the ground is frozen. Cold slows the set and risks damage before the concrete gains strength; heavy rain damages the surface. Hot weather is its own problem, shortening working time. Weather cancels pours more often than it slows them, and a cancelled truck is still a charged truck.
Where these figures come from
The wages are the national minimums agreed between employers and unions, republished each July. The costs on top of them are the statutory ones every employer actually pays. The outputs - how much a gang gets through in a day - are blended from published estimating guidance, and they are the part worth arguing with, which is why every one is a control you can move.
Other trades
- Bricklaying£35.68/m²
- Blockwork£23.84/m²
- Plastering£8.50/m²
- Rendering£38.34/m²
- Floor screed£2.83/m²
- Tiling£17.71/m²
- Roofing£32.80/m²
- Block paving£25.56/m²
- Tarmac driveways£15.34/m²
- Resin driveways£16.61/m²
- Painting£14.17/m²
- Stud walls£17.71/m²
- Patios£31.95/m²
- Repointing£26.57/m²
- Plasterboarding£12.39/m²
- Decking£31.88/m²
- Fencing£25.56/m²
- Turfing£3.42/m²
- Coving£7.08/m²
- Loft insulation£4.27/m²
- External wall insulation£38.34/m²
- Soft strip£8.54/m²
- Hand excavation£85.41/m²
- Shuttering£8.50/m²
- Mesh and rebar£2.56/m²
Pricing a job like these?
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