Paleowage Labs 2: How to pull of a $15/acre survey...

I heard recently that a large survey somewhere in the deserts of Southern Arizona was awarded to a firm for a cost of $15 per acre. Seems low to me...and fishy. Using the same fictitious company previously cited on the blog -- you know, the one with 90% overhead that pays service contract act wages and benefits -- here is a scenario where a company could actually pull off a $15/acre price, assuming a 2,000 acre survey with very low archaeological site density:

	PI	PD	CC	Tech	Graphics	Clerical
Hourly	$    29.00	$    21.00	$   17.00	$   15.00	$   21.00	$   12.00
Overhead	90.00%	90.00%	90.00%	90.00%	90.00%	90.00%
Fee	10.00%	10.00%	10.00%	10.00%	10.00%	10.00%
Billing Rate	$60.61	$43.89	$35.53	$31.35	$43.89	$25.08
Administration (Permitting, Meetings)	2	4	0	0	0	0
Prefield Research	0	8	0	0	0	0
Fieldwork Travel	0	0	0	0	0	0
Fieldwork Survey	0	128	128	128	0	0
Fieldwork Recording	0	0	0	0	0	0
Document Preparation	4	128	0	0	0	0
Graphics	0	0	0	0	40	0
Compliance	0	0	40	0	0	0
Labor Hours	6	268	168	128	40	0
Labor Cost	$23,863.62
Vehicle Mileage	1	vehicle	2000	miles at	$0.55	per mile =	$1,100.00
Lodging	12	nights	3	rooms at	$60.00	night =	$2,160.00
Per Diem	16	days	3	crew at	$30.00	day =	$1,440.00
Research Fees	$35.00	/sq.mi	8	miles =			$280.00
Compliance Fees	16	days	3	crew at	$20.00	day =	$960.00
Reproduction	2000	pages at	$0.10	per page =			$200.00
Other Costs	$6,140.00
Total Cost	$30,003.62
Cost Per Acre	$15.00

At first glance, seems to check out. Notice a few things missing?

Like travel time? I assumed for this model that the project is about 3 hours away from the office, but I couldn't afford to pay it and keep the $15/acre. So, the 3-person crew gets no pay to drive to and from the project area. Unless, I lowered wages but that would be against the intent of the Service Contract Act..

What else? Site recording you say? Well, I assumed that there would be FEW (IF ANY) SITES (of course, what else would I assume?), so the industry standard 40 acres per person per day was all that was used to derive field effort. Of course, if there were any more than just a few sites, we would be heading for MOD TOWN!!!! PARTAY!

Is that 128 hours adequate for report writing? Another industry "standard," most often used by the Feds in estimating effort is that field director and write-up time are one-to-one. Ok, so if few sites were found, maybe I could pull this off...

As PI and part owner of this company, my profit is built into the fee and probably overhead too, so I'm only mildly worried about losing money (or, more accurately not making enough profit). But what if? Well, if I find too many sites I have an open pass for a Mod, since I've clearly indicated my assumptions with the bid offer (I did remember to do that, didn't I?). Maybe I should play it safe...keep that hotel and per diem money? Why not, it's nice this time of year, they can camp (oh, I hate camping, but they love it, wont mind a bit). Oh, I don't have to pay those research fees, I'll just use the on-line GIS thingamajiggy. No need to read those prior reports.

Oh, I can always pay them less...and no benefits! The Feds have no way of checking. Lets see what that would do to the bottom line. Eliminating just those things brings the bottom line to $20,532.10 or $10.27/acre. NICE! That's almost an extra $10,000 in my pocket. Woo Hoo.