MethodFree tool
How a labour rate is built
Every figure in our calculators comes out of the same six-step sum. This is that sum, with the source of each number and what moves it. Nothing here is proprietary — the point is that you can check it.
The chain, in six steps
- The gang. Who is actually on site. A bricklaying gang is typically two tradespeople and a labourer, because one labourer cannot keep three bricklayers in mortar and materials. Pricing the tradesperson alone and forgetting the labourer understates brickwork by about a third.
- Their wages. We start from the CIJC Working Rule Agreement: tradesperson £16.40 an hour, labourer £13.18, agreed nationally between employers and unions and republished each July.
- The costs on top of wages. Employer’s National Insurance at 15% above £5,000 a year, holiday pay at 12.07%, pension at 3%, the CITB levy at 0.35%, plus sick pay, training and employer’s liability insurance. About 35% on top of the basic wage, and the single most commonly forgotten part of a price.
- Hours on the tools. Not hours on site — hours actually working. Eight is the benchmark.
- Output. How much that gang gets through in a day. This is the number that decides everything and the one worth arguing about, which is why it is a control rather than a constant.
- Overheads, profit and location. Overheads and profit at 20% by default, then a location factor for where the work is.
Why output is the number that matters
Wages barely move — they are set nationally and change once a year. Output moves constantly, and it moves the price one for one: a gang laying 400 bricks a day instead of 500 prices 25% higher, on identical wages.
That is the difference between a price book and a calculator. A book gives you somebody else’s output. A calculator lets you use your own, which is the only one that will actually happen on your job.
What the rates exclude, and why
Materials, scaffold, plant and supervision are all outside the rate. That is deliberate rather than lazy: materials move week to week and vary by specification, and scaffold is priced by lift and elevation rather than by floor area, so folding either into a per-square-metre figure would produce a number that looks precise and is wrong.
The job section on each calculator takes them as lump sums, because a roofer looking at a job knows it is a £2,000 scaffold before they know anything else.
Why there is a minimum charge
A day is indivisible. A gang that turns up for 20 m² of concrete still travels, unloads, sets up and goes home, so the honest floor on any job is a day of that gang, priced. Every calculator defaults its minimum to exactly that figure and lets you change it.
What a benchmark is, and is not
Our starting figures are benchmarks: a defensible place to begin, blended from published wage agreements, statutory rates and estimating guidance. They are not a market survey and they are not a quote. Ask ten experienced contractors what plastering costs per square metre and you will get ten answers — all defensible, because their gangs, overheads, vans and regions differ.
That is the whole reason every number is a control. The moment you move one, the figure stops being our benchmark and becomes yours.
Questions people ask
How do you work out a labour rate per square metre?
Take the gang's hourly wages, add the costs an employer pays on top of wages, multiply by the hours they are on the tools, then divide by how much they get through in a day. That gives cost per square metre. Add overheads and profit, and adjust for where the job is, and you have a price.
What is a realistic on-cost percentage for construction labour?
Around 35% on top of the basic wage covers employer's National Insurance at 15%, holiday pay at 12.07%, the auto-enrolment pension at 3%, the CITB levy at 0.35%, and an allowance for sick pay, training and employer's liability insurance. A self-employed CIS subcontractor carries those costs themselves, so pricing their own labour they would use 0%.
What overhead and profit should a contractor add?
Published guidance puts overheads at 10–20% of project cost and profit at 5–10%, with small firms and subcontractors commonly working to 15–25% combined because overheads spread across less turnover. Our calculators start at 20% and let you change it.
Do these rates include materials?
No. Every rate is labour only, and the exclusion is stated on each card. On brickwork, materials are the larger half of the price. Scaffold, plant and supervision are excluded too — they are priced as lump sums in the job section, because the person pricing knows those numbers and we do not.
Where do the wage rates come from?
The Construction Industry Joint Council Working Rule Agreement, the national minimum rates agreed between employers and unions. They are republished each July and our figures carry the date they took effect.
Why does the same work price differently on different jobs?
Almost always because of output — how much the gang gets through in a day. Access, height, weather, cutting, complexity and repetition all move it, and a 20% change in output is a 20% change in the rate. That is why output is a control on every calculator rather than a number we fix for you.
Pricing a job like these?
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