Shell construction (Rohbau)
Shell work puts the most material and the most people on a single site. The bill rarely goes wrong on the masonry or the concrete — it goes wrong on the days you stand still and on the work somebody asked for over the phone.
How it is billed
Masonry goes by the square metre of wall, concrete by the cubic metre, reinforcement by the kilogram or the tonne, formwork by the square metre of contact face, excavation and backfill by the cubic metre. Lintels, precast floors and shafts go by the piece. Site set-up, the crane and its standing days are items of their own, not a surcharge on the price per metre. The program knows all these units — square metre, cubic metre, kilogram, tonne, piece, running metre, hour and lump sum — so the quote looks the way the site counts. Areas and volumes are worked out in the program itself: you enter the dimensions wall areas, concrete and excavation volumes, name every measurement your own way, and the total goes into the quote as a finished item with the breakdown — you can see where the figure came from. The program does not deduct openings; that stays with you.
What disappears on paper
What disappears is the time when nothing moves. The concrete did not arrive, the steel fixer came a day late, frost stopped the blockwork, the crane waited for a signal. What also disappears is work ordered by word of mouth: the site manager rings about two extra openings and digging out under the footing, the crew does it on the spot, and at the final account not a word of it is in the contract. Under a VOB/B contract that is no small thing: a claim for additional payment must be announced before the work is carried out — otherwise it stands on weak legs. Then the small items that slip between stages: carting away surplus soil, securing the excavation, clearing up after another crew, winter working conditions.
Work it out yourself
Take the last site and count the days when the men were there and the work stood still. Multiply them by what a day of crew plus hired plant costs you — you know that figure. Then recall the work somebody ordered by phone that never reached the contract: price the hours and the material at your own rates. One site’s total multiplied by the number of sites in a year shows what a single missing sheet of paper costs.
Five minutes a day
Before the pour — a photo of the reinforcement. Once the concrete is in, nobody can check how much steel went in or how it was laid. In the evening: your hours and your crew’s, the concrete deliveries, the material issued. Out of that comes the site diary: day by day, hours beside photos and beside material. When somebody asks six months later why the stage took three weeks instead of two, the answer is ready and it carries a date.
What the program watches for you
On shell work you almost always work for another construction company, so the reverse charge under §13b is the rule and not the exception — the program sets it itself and watches the §48b certificate, without which your client must withhold fifteen per cent and pay it to the tax office. It watches the instalment invoices: on a site running for months they keep you liquid, and in the final account they must be deducted to the euro. It watches the warranty periods — under a VOB/B contract it will not accept less than four years, under a works contract governed by the German civil code less than five — and the six-month deadline to invoice work carried out on a property. Additional work is kept as a variation to the contract together with the date it was announced — in a dispute that date decides whether you are paid for it.
At the end of the year
Shell work brings the biggest items of the whole year: concrete, steel, masonry, crane and plant hire, paid hours, kilometres between sites. All of them are already recorded against the jobs, so the annual accounts and the VAT returns read finished figures. Invoices under the reverse charge land in the right boxes by themselves — and that is where most mistakes are made.
What matters is entering things regularly — a photo of the reinforcement before the pour and the hours logged the same day count for more than the best program.
