INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION The information, rates and prices included in this section are calculated examples of actual owning and operating costs of a range of construction plant and equipment. To an extent they will serve as a guide to prevailing commercial plant hire rates, but be aware that many factors will influence actual hire rates. For example, rates could be lower because of long term hire, use of older or second hand machines, low market demands/loss leaders, easy tasks or sites near to the depot. Rates could be higher due to short term hire, high production demands, low utilisation factors, specialist operations, restricted working and restricted accessibility problems, high profit or overhead demands and finance fluctuations. The use factors will mean a hired machine may not be used productively for each hour on site, it is therefore up to the estimator to allow for reasonable outputs in his unit rate calculations. These and other considerations must be borne in mind if using these costs as a comparison to hire rates, especially operated plant. All rates quoted EXCLUDE the following:

… Cost of drivers / operators

… VAT CONTRACTOR OWNED PLANT Plant owned by a Contractor generally falls under two headings:

… Small plant and tools which are the subject of a direct charge to contracts and for estimating purposes are normally allowed for as a percentage of the labour cost in site on-costs (see Preliminaries and General Items), although many items are shown in this section for information.