Server build

[fredbayker]

Morning all,

 

Does anybody know the market rate for a server build?

I have the opportunity to make a little bit of cash but no idea how much to charge.

I don't have all the details yet, so I don't know if I'll be setting up a new DC or a member server and what roles this server will perform. The user base is about 20ppl.

 

Any rough ideas would be helpful.

Thanks

[JordanT91]

Would you not just charge your hourly rate? It doesn't matter if you are setting up a server or doing grunt work replacing monitors, your rate would be the same wouldn't it? I would charge at least £30/hour if I was doing work for a business (I've no idea if that is above or below the market rate, but that's what I'd want to make it worth my time). From there, it just depends on what type of server you'll be setting up, that will dictate the amount of hours but not your hourly rate. You could be working for days to get an SCCM server up and running, but a DHCP server might take an hour or two so make sure your rate is fair but also profitable for you.

[Fazza]

Work out an hourly rate and use this to calculate your daily and half-daily rate. All you need to do then is work out how much time you're going to need to set it all up and that will give you your answer.

 

If they havent worked out what they want you to do yet then giving them your daily rate will help them judge if it's feasible for them or not.

 

I guess it all depends on who you're doing this for, is it a 'private job' or via your School/Academy?

 

A typical daily rate for an engineer at the moment seems to be around £800 a day! If you were to charge £30 an hour (x8) would give you a daily rate of £240 which is a lot less but a nice little earner for you or your School/Academy!

[bossman]

We had a quote from CRB to build a physical member server and configure for our Biometrics system and they were going to charge £4k!

 

Don't undersell yourself charge the going rates which is around £500 to £1000 per day

 

£50 per hour I would charge which is less than what most IT companies charge these days

[pcstru]

I recently had to look over a quote for a friends business which included building a DC, Exchange Server and migration of mailboxes (exchange 2010->2013). They (the supplier) were billing £750 per day for their time and quoted 2 days to complete. This is a small business with around a dozen employees.

[synaesthesia]

We had a quote from CRB to build a physical member server and configure for our Biometrics system and they were going to charge £4k!

 

Don't undersell yourself charge the going rates which is around £500 to £1000 per day

 

£50 per hour I would charge which is less than what most IT companies charge these days

 

£4k for a server, £400 to change a notereader firmware, £350 to change a coin reader firmware. Good grief, those plonkers are raking it in. The firmwares are £40 for both at most, I don't know how powerful a server needs to be for a biometrics system but they don't take much. So let's say 1.5k for a reasonable server and it should be something they do all the time, so half a day's work at best.

Edited March 15, 2017 by synaesthesia

[localzuk]

We've just paid £900 for a day's engineer time for a project in our Trust, so £800-1000 is about the normal rate it seems.

 

Remember to take into account things like tax, your travel time, vehicle running costs etc...

[theeggmaster]

£4k for a server, £400 to change a notereader firmware, £350 to change a coin reader firmware. Good grief, those plonkers are raking it in. The firmwares are £40 for both at most, I don't know how powerful a server needs to be for a biometrics system but they don't take much. So let's say 1.5k for a reasonable server and it should be something they do all the time, so half a day's work at best.

 

Last time I looked at a CRB reval machine (about 9 months ago), it was because the door had been easily opened by some students. I noticed that the reval machine ran on a Raspberry Pi, so it's not exactly expensive hardware!

[bossman]

£4k for a server, £400 to change a notereader firmware, £350 to change a coin reader firmware. Good grief, those plonkers are raking it in. The firmwares are £40 for both at most, I don't know how powerful a server needs to be for a biometrics system but they don't take much. So let's say 1.5k for a reasonable server and it should be something they do all the time, so half a day's work at best.

 

 

We didn't pay this, I came to an understanding with our SLT and they paid me for the job via overtime plus TOIL, job only took less than a couple of minutes as VM on our Hyper-V platform.

[fredbayker]

Thanks for all the replies you guys. I'll decide what to do when I find out what's involved.

Keep the suggestions rolling in by all means.

[PotNoodleTech]

and they paid me for the job via overtime plus TOIL

 

Wow wish that existed here!

[djm968]

Couple of things to consider. As already mentioned, you should work out how much do you actually need to cover your expenses. If the organisation or someone employed there is known to you are they expecting "mates rates". Do you consider this to be an opportunity to promote yourself (skills) and possibly win more business. Are you competing against anyone else for the work.

 

I would suggest that for any server work you should be looking to charge around £500 per day minimum.

[fredbayker]

The job is for a relative of a friend who had a small business. I do consider this an opportunity to promote myself so I do intend to undercut and quotes they may have gotten elsewhere.

I don't know what they've been quoted yet but I'm confident I can beat most quotes.

[bossman]

@zhinkler

 

Don't forget also the added aftercare service which is where a great deal of your time will be spent as the company will expect an SLA I would presume?

 

£50 per hour and also a call out fee to cover your costs as they may expect you to drop everything and commit to them personally, KPI's need to be sorted first between you as part of the SLA which I would have them read and sign just to cover yourself.

 

Doing stuff for friends or friends of the family no matter what the relationship can sometimes turn very sour quickly so I would advise you go into this with a business head and keep everything professional so everyone understands the contract.

[fredbayker]

@bossman

Yeh, you've made some valid points there. I hadn't given the aftercare a thought.

I will have to sort out the conditions of contract/job before I proceed.

Personally I'd rather walk away after doing the job but let's face it, that's not going to happen!! [emoji20]