Estimating brickwork beyond the brick count

A bricklaying estimate starts with an area and a brick count, because both come off a drawing in minutes.

The days come from everything the count ignores: the openings, the corners, the height and how far a labourer carries each pack.

Openings cost time the area already counted

A window reduces the brick count and increases the labour. Each one needs a lintel, a reveal, a sill and time to set the opening out correctly.

A wall with six openings takes longer than a solid wall of the same length, even though the estimate sheet says it needs fewer bricks.

Corners and returns set the pace

A bricklayer works fastest along a straight run and slowest at a corner, where every course needs squaring and levelling.

Counting corners, piers and returns predicts the day better than metres run. A complicated footprint is a slow footprint whatever its perimeter.

Height changes everything above head level

Work above about a metre and a half needs a platform, and every lift of that platform stops the laying.

The scaffold arrangement therefore belongs in the estimate rather than in the builder's column. Our guide to scaffolding hire covers the cost of leaving it standing longer than planned.

Mortar and materials arrive in the way

Sand, cement and packs of brick all need somewhere to sit, and a tight site means double handling on every load.

A site where the truck reaches the wall is a different job from one where everything travels by wheelbarrow through a garage.

Cutting is slow, and specials are slower

Feature courses, arches, raked joints and colour matching all take time no count reflects.

A quote that prices those as ordinary brickwork loses on exactly the jobs the customer cares most about, which is the worst place to lose.

Weather stops brickwork before it stops most trades

Rain washes fresh mortar, frost ruins it, and heat dries it too quickly to bond properly.

A programme with no allowance for lost days turns into an argument with the builder in the first bad week.

Price the clean up and the protection

Covering the work, cleaning the face and removing the waste are real hours at the end of every job.

Those tasks get skipped in estimates because they happen last, and they are the reason a job that looked finished on Friday runs into Monday.

Record the real rate, per job type

Bricks laid per day varies enormously between a boundary wall and a two storey house with a complicated facade.

Keeping that figure per job type turns the next estimate into arithmetic. Our guide to job costing covers comparing the quoted figure against what the work took.

The builder's programme is not your programme

Brickwork sits between the frame and the roof, so a delay anywhere before it lands entirely on the bricklayer's week.

A builder who promises a Monday start usually means the week, and a gang standing in a yard earns nothing at all.

Confirming the day before, and holding a smaller job as backup, is how a bricklaying business survives somebody else's slippage.

A certifier checks the ties and the damp course

A certifier looks at the wall ties, the damp proof course and the weep holes. A fault in any of them stops the job.

Those items cost minutes to do correctly and days to put right afterwards, which makes them the cheapest quality control on the site.

What to change first

• The estimate counts openings, corners and returns, not only area
• Scaffold height and its lifts appear as their own line
• Site access and double handling get priced before the first pack arrives
• Feature and cut work carries a rate above ordinary brickwork
• The programme allows for weather rather than assuming none
• Clean up, protection and waste removal each get hours
• Bricks laid per day records per job type, for the next estimate