How to price a paving job

Pricing a paving job means adding up materials, labour and overheads so the work leaves you something at the end. The order is always the same: measure the area, work out blocks plus waste, sub-base and kerbs, price the labour (per m² or per day), then add haulage and margin. Most of the money is lost on the lines nobody wrote down — cutting, muck away, overheads.

1. Take-off. Measure the area in m² and the perimeter in metres for kerbs. Note the awkward corners and curves — they are what turn into cuts.
2. Materials. Blocks plus 5–10% waste, MOT Type 1 and laying course sand by layer thickness, kerbs round the perimeter.
3. Labour. Laying £18–45/m² depending on scope, sub-base preparation £22–32/m², cutting £10–15/m, kerb installation £14–22/m.
4. Haulage and overheads. Material delivery, muck away, plant, fuel, and the time spent on the site visit and the quote.
5. Margin. Add your profit; on small or fiddly areas use a higher rate per m² or a fixed price.
6. Quote. Build an itemised breakdown with quantities and unit prices, VAT if you are registered, and the total.

Anyone can add up materials and labour. Overheads are sly because they cannot be pinned to one job, so they get left out — and they run on whether you are on site or sat at home watching it rain.

Overheads are the van and its depreciation, diesel for site visits, plant and its servicing, diamond blades and consumables, public liability insurance, your phone, your accountant, and a yard if you rent one. There are two ways to spread them: as a percentage of direct costs, or as a rate per working day. The second is more accurate, because overheads run on time, not on tonnage.

The check question is simple: if you had no work at all next month, what would that month cost you? Divide that figure by your billable days and you have your daily overhead. If it appears nowhere in the quote, you are paying it out of your margin.

On groundworks, finding something is normal. An old concrete footing, an unmarked cable, made ground full of builders' rubble, or a subgrade that goes soft after the first proper rain. None of it shows up on a site visit, and none of it belongs in the price as a hidden risk you swallow in silence.

It is cleaner to write down what the price assumes: normal excavation without unusual obstructions, with anything beyond that charged by agreement at the unit rates in the quote. A customer accepts that when they hear it before signing. Heard for the first time on the final invoice, it starts an argument.

Weather is the other one. If you are booked for a date and it rains all week, that day is gone and nobody pays for it. Which is why a start date in a quote should be a range, not a date.

• Don't skip waste and cutting — both climb fast once there are curves.
• Price small areas with an uplift; there is more overhead per m² on them.
• Put a validity date on the quote — material prices move.
• Say whether your figures are with or without VAT. Registration is compulsory once turnover passes £90,000, and a homeowner compares the total they hand over, not the net.
• Subcontracting for another contractor brings you under CIS: a deduction is taken from the labour part of your payment, not from materials. Keep the two split on your paperwork and allow for the gap in your cash flow.
• Give the customer a clear breakdown — it builds trust and speeds up acceptance.

Check your quantities in the paving calculator, your rates in the contractor rate guide, and the shape of the document in the sample paving quote.