Fiberglass work invoice

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doctormilner

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During an inspection of bow thruster it was pointed out to me that large sections of grp under the forward berth had delaminated. Turned out it was approx 4sq m divided into five areas under longitudinal and lateral box sections. The GRP guy and a shipwright set to work after all the tanks ,watermaker ,bow thruster and its battery box had been removed. The invoice I am querying is for the following; They cut out the delamination, sanded and glassed the sections and flowcoated over, refitted bow thruster and batt box,followed by a big clean up. Any fiberglass experts out there? Does 65 hours @ £40 seem about right for what I described?
 
From my experiences of fibreglass work, fitting my BT and several other constructional GRP jobs on different boats I would have expected a little less time than 65 hours but 4sq M/42 square ft is a large area and split into 5 areas although not 5 seperate jobs is quite bitty. I would have been expecting a couple of days to prepare for re-laminating, 2 days to glass, a day to flo-coat and aother to clean up. So 6 days/50 hours should be adequate but it is hard to be sure as the level of access to the compartments would be a major factor also it would be a pretty horrible job upside down in lockers cutting, grinding and fibreglassing. Ventilation and health and safety also being issues which take time to set up and remove.
However £40 and hour for a specialized service is not at all high and overall you probably have a reasonable if not cheap deal.
Do you have a spec as to how many layers of delamination were removed and how many laysers and weight of matting/cloth were used in the build up. You could have a much stronger boat than you started with - or not!
I have just re-read your post and 2 men on the job of this type would involve more man hours than a single hander as inevitably there would be time when one is waiting for the other to finish something, for access etc.
 
Prep work is time consuming,cutting up multiple layers of different sections up and down the ladder working in awkward positions and ventilation et etc and glassing done properly takes time,as said!
 
It doesn't sound un
doctormilner said:
During an inspection of bow thruster it was pointed out to me that large sections of grp under the forward berth had delaminated. Turned out it was approx 4sq m divided into five areas under longitudinal and lateral box sections. The GRP guy and a shipwright set to work after all the tanks ,watermaker ,bow thruster and its battery box had been removed. The invoice I am querying is for the following; They cut out the delamination, sanded and glassed the sections and flowcoated over, refitted bow thruster and batt box,followed by a big clean up. Any fiberglass experts out there? Does 65 hours @ £40 seem about right for what I described?
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£40/hour is cheap for a skilled workman and given the awkward working conditions and the amount of work involved, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
 
Always hard to say from a brief description, but to me it does not seem unreasonable. As pointed out, access is makes a big difference. That include if you are able to sit balanced and not having to support your body with a hand. In that case you have only one hand free for work. Do I understand it correct that the frame of stiffners (stringers, floors) was loose? In this case, it is time consuming work to grind away loose the GRP and grind the side of the frame parts. Lost of corners where big tools does not fit in.
I'm not saying that you have no case, I have too little info for that, just pointing out that such work can be quite time consuming.
 
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