> Stainless steel costs much more, but total project cost goes up less than 10%.

I think people are often surprised how little materials cost affects the total cost of a job.

I'm having this argument at work, where I want some more expensive cabling installed in a bunch of offices across Scotland so it doesn't need to be done again in another ten year's time, but "that stuff is so expensive, do we really need it?" is what I'm running up against.

So as it turns out today I'm giving them a breakdown of the cost of the job. Guess what the expensive bits are?

Did you guess "wages for two guys, hotel rooms for two guys, 800 miles of diesel, and a couple of ferry tickets?"

Well, you're way ahead of today's crowd then.

In general, in the UK, labour costs dominate. How do people not understand that?!

This is what's interesting with AI pricing at the moment - it has gone from "a fraction of the equivalent labour cost" and so people have tried to cut staff, and is moving to "on par with labour cost" and all the calculations change.

I hope you’re prepared for a huge amount of bike shedding… but if we pick this color, we can save a couple of dollars…

>I think people are often surprised how little materials cost affects the total cost of a job.

Because people don't understand how much compliance and box checking and check the guy who checked the last guy's work there is in a "you need government permission for this and not the easy permission they give a homeowner deck project" sized construction project.

> I think people are often surprised how little materials cost affects the total cost of a job.

It's because they frankly never did it. Nobody that had to contract something around the house is surprised by cost like that, it often costs more than price of renting equipment + you doing it yourself 3 times slower than an expert would did it, even if you're paid well.

There is reason there is so many DIY channels, labour costs are high and install costs of some stuff can be ridiculous (like 2 hour job to install AC costing more than cheap AC unit).

That's also partly the reason the more expensive materials are used - if they offer savings in labour (say way faster to put in), they might be worth it vs paying someone for more hours