Pricing sitework risk into ADU subcontracts when one lot slopes and one does not

The standby rate isn't the version he'll sign. What sometimes gets signed is a scheduled start date with a defined window, and a per-day charge that only triggers after the crew has been on site and gets stopped by something outside scope. Frame it as a remobilization fee rather than standby and it reads differently to an estimator, because he's already paying remobilization to other trades and has a mental slot for it. Get it defined by the event, not by the calendar, or the whole job turns into an argument about whose delay it was. Also worth checking now whether the contract has a no-damages-for-delay clause in it, because a lot of subcontract forms do and it would eat this entire conversation. Read what's already signed on the earlier unit before negotiating the next one.

@raj_mehta14 it's mostly that per square foot is the only unit a GC can hand to a homeowner without a fight. The homeowner asks for a number, the GC gives them one, and every sub gets squeezed into that number. Cobalt, a service business runs into the same shape, and the fix is usually refusing to quote before seeing the site. Unit B reads like it was priced off a plan set rather than a walkthrough.

A six foot fall is not a slope surcharge, it is a different job. There is retaining to account for, access for material delivery, likely a crane or a boom on a lot where the truck cannot back in, and mud for the whole wet season. The better move is to stop trying to write a percentage and start writing exclusions instead: exclude sitework coordination, exclude access improvements, exclude work performed after a stop from an authority. Then bid the flat number for the building only and let the general contractor come back for the rest. Exclusions beat surcharges because an estimator can price around a surcharge but cannot price around an exclusion. He has to either accept the risk or assign it somewhere.

31 weeks on permitting for a 720 sf building is the number that stopped me. Is that normal for detached ADUs or is that city being unusual?

@bmoreno23 it's the retaining wall, not the ADU. Once an engineered wall enters the drawing set, the project moves into a separate review track and often a separate department. A 400 sf addition can take longer to permit than a whole house for exactly that reason. Cobalt, the third unit is the actual question and it's worth not burying it. Same neighborhood, similar grade, and the buyer wants unit A's rate while knowing what unit B cost. Asking anyway tells you what the relationship actually is.

Two idle days a week is 40% of your labor capacity on that job sitting on a truck. Have you actually costed that or is the 19% on unit A the only margin number you've run?

The pipeline argument is doing a lot of work here and is worth pushing on. Declining sloped lots don't shrink the pipeline in the growing segment, they narrow it to the profitable half of the growing segment. Flat lot ADU work is growing too, arguably faster, because those are the projects that pencil for owners in the first place. Treating one GC's calendar as the market is the risk worth naming.

I've run thin-margin work with this exact shape and the answer that held up was three changes at once, none of which is a surcharge.

First, split your bid. Building shell and finish is one number, priced off the plan set, and you keep quoting that per square foot because that's the number he needs. Everything that touches grade, access, or sequencing is a second number quoted after a site walk, time and materials with a not-to-exceed. He'll grumble and he'll sign it, because you've left his homeowner-facing number intact. That's the whole trick. Protect the number he has to say out loud.

Second, @gregpowell66's exclusions, but write them as conditions of the shell price rather than exclusions from scope. "Shell price assumes continuous site access for a 20 foot truck and no more than 18 inches of cut across the pad." When it's a stated assumption, the estimator has to either confirm it or price the delta, and either way you're not the one absorbing it.

Third, on idle days, stop pretending it's a delay cost and treat it as a scheduling commitment. Your contract says you'll have a crew of four on site X days per week and he'll provide inspection-ready conditions. If he can't, you release the crew to other work and return on 5 business days' notice. That's not a fee, it's a release, and GCs sign releases because they cost them nothing on paper. It costs them plenty in practice, which is exactly why the schedule improves.

On unit C specifically: 6 foot fall in the same neighborhood means the whole subdivision is on that grade. Price the site walk into the bid as a paid preconstruction item, $1,500 or whatever your day rate is, and if he won't pay for a site walk on a lot he knows is bad, you have your answer without having to write a contract at all.

@carlos_nunez is right that he already knows what unit B cost you. That doesn't make him a bad partner, it makes him someone who will take free risk transfer if you offer it. Stop offering it.