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What will the scaffold cost?
On most remedial jobs scaffold is one of the largest single lines, and it is almost never quoted as one. It is priced by the square metre to erect, then by the square metre every week it stands. That means your programme, not just your repair, drives the price.
Rough guide: the length of the elevation multiplied by its height. For a whole building, add the elevations you need access to. A 7 storey building with a 40 m frontage is about 800 m² for that one face.
Count the whole programme, not just the repair. Hold point inspections, engineer turnaround and waiting on decisions all happen with the scaffold standing.
Catch fans are usually required where there is pedestrian access below. A footpath licence is needed where the scaffold sits over public land.
Why the number moves with the calendar.
Scaffold has three separate costs, and only two of them are fixed by the size of your building.
You pay once to erect it, once to take it down, and then every single week it stands in between. The first few weeks of hire are usually included in the erect rate. After that the meter runs. That is why a job that stalls waiting on a decision, an engineer's inspection or a levy vote can cost more than the extra work itself.
It is also why we will not give you a scaffold figure without a programme. Anyone who quotes scaffold as a flat weekly amount is either guessing or has priced one specific job and is reusing the number.
What this does not include.
Scaffold is access, not work. The repair itself, the supervision on site, waste removal, plant and the engineering all sit on top. On a typical remedial job the whole preliminaries package, of which scaffold is the biggest part, runs somewhere between 15 and 30 percent of the works value, and on scaffold heavy facade work it goes higher.
If you want the rest of the picture, the honest answer is that it needs a look at the building. We would rather come and see it than put a number on something we have not inspected.
Want this checked against your actual building?
Send it through and we will tell you what we think, at no charge.
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