Project Manager Rates

I have a marine general contractor in the Daytona are who is excellent. He charges for certain work and doesn't for other work. For instance, he handled removing and installing the engines and charged for that but I paid the overhaul shop directly for their work. Overall it's an excellent relationship and I trust him. His name is Joe Kuehl with Pro-Boat 386-212-7159 Joe is fair and a straight shooter with an excellent reputation.

So what are his rates? That is the question at hand.

It's interesting that I cannot answer your question regarding his hourly rates because I have never taken note of that and I'm sure that it doesn't matter. The issue is whether you are getting value for your money. Hourly rates are often just a big ripoff in disguise. Somebody can charge $70/hr and lie about the hours or $140/hr and lie about the hours or $90 and be honest about the hours but do bad work. My answer is that you will find that it's difficult to nail down the rate but that it's very easy to get ripped off. When I purchased my Bertram 54 back in 2010, I hired a "project manager" for $200 / day and wasted at least $30k that way. I would give Joe a call and ask him. What Joe has is the very thing that the OP is looking for though and that is integrity.

Well stated!

I agree that once you have established a rapport and know each other estimates and stated rates become less important, but I sure wouldn't give anyone carte blanc first time out

I hired a project manager to handle a complete exterior paint job on my 65 Viking.I added a fair amount of additional work in the engine room and interior once the job had started.Guy did a great job, was very knowledgable and great at sourcing materials and qualified subs to handle the work.PM me if your interested in the details.

I have a question for those that use Project Managers, do you require a written plan from them that gets signed offed/approved? Something like a Microsoft Project Schedule that shows resources and critical paths or just a clean excel spreadsheet with sufficient information?

I personally would have that kind of expectation, but do not know if it is prevalent in our industry?

Your correct in that co-ordination or the lack of it can be the make or break of any project. Deciding what should be done and doing it is also very important. I once tried to explain to an Owner who was doing his own project management that if a job took two men 5 days and he didn't like it and it took two men 2 days to pull it apart and 5 more days to reinstall it again that was 24 man days for a 10 day job. He was a supposedly intelligent guy who obviously had made a bit of money but he could not get his head around this basic concept. He ended up walking away and owed the shipyard a ton of money. I saw the boat a few years later, someone else had finished it off and it looked really nice.

It's like anything else, shortcuts get costly in time and money. Select those you know you can trust to do the job right. Pricing from a substandard vendor is of no value whatsoever.

Guy I worked with for many years had a saying: "If you don't have the time to do it right the first time, where do you get the time to redo it?".