WATER JET CONFERENCE - Waterjet Technology Association

contractor with old, unsafe, equipment, untrained operators and low overheads may be seen as a
"good buy" because of lower rates. This is often due to lack of knowledge on the part of the
customer.
Alternatively the above facts may be recognised, albeit tacitly, by the customer but the
cheaper contractor may be simply kept as a bargaining ploy by the customer to depress prices.
The customer may demand priced jobs as opposed to hourly paid or day work, In these
circumstances the contractor will use the following "rule of thumb", or an adaptation thereof,
depending on overhead expenses
(Estimate hours/days completion) X (Hourly/date rate) + (Expenses, travel &
subsistence) + 50%, Contingency = Price for job,
The contractor will also sometimes overestimate the time required because he knows that
customers will sometimes misdescribe a job or provide optimistic information as to the condition
of pipework etc. which he often has to take at face value, and with a shutdown budgeted if he
makes a loss then usually that is his misfortune.
If the contractor does take priced work then usually he will put his operators on a bonus.
Fig VI shows the comparison between operators of differing levels of experience working on the
same job at hourly paid rates and bonus rates for priced work
Obviously, operators will work more diligently if they are paid more and the job will be
completed much more quickly but since the customer may not wish to pay the premium for
speedy completion, and this is always a matter of negotiation, the contractor in the UK is more
likely than not to work on an hourly or daywork basis.
Customers are now becoming more sophisticated, they are sending engineers for training,
in what is for most of them, a new technology. This can only be of benefit to the contractor and
thus the operator in the longer term.
With the increasing number of applications being found every day the vendor of service
or equipment is having to become more expert in a wide range of applications, but no matter how
expert one may become One can always learn more.
As a cautionary tale for those who price based on incomplete knowledge, we used to like
to think that we knew just about everything there was to know about the cleaning of aero engine
turbine blades manufactured for or on behalf of a certain well known UK jet engine
manufacturer. About six months ago one of their major sub contractors asked us if we could
attempt to clear some 14-16 thou cooling passages in some of their scrap blades. We attempted
the job and were successful at about the 50%, level. The manufacturer was very excited and
immediately ordered a machine for this purpose from use asking us in the meantime to continue
to clear cores from blades which would otherwise be scrapped, and to quote a price.
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