Touch-up days, washes and the yearly price adjustment
Three numbers sit on top of the repaint in every program year. This guide explains each one, so you can explain it to a committee too.
Touch-up days
Touch-up days are crew time set aside each year for the buildings already painted: worn or damaged areas, marks and minor repairs. They keep the early years looking as good as the later ones, and they are what makes a program feel looked after rather than just scheduled.
How the suggestion is worked out
The suggestion is 5% of the repaint labour hours of the buildings painted in earlier years, always rounded up to whole crew days. A crew sent out for 11 hours wastes the travel and set-up of the part day, so Surfacely never plans a part day.
- 230 hours already painted × 5% = 11.5 hours → 2 days (16 h)
- 520 hours already painted × 5% = 26 hours → 4 days (32 h)
A day is your working day, the same day length your job rules use (8 hours unless you have changed it). Year 1 is usually zero, because nothing has been painted yet, and the allowance grows each year as more of the site is finished.
Changing a year
Every site is different, so change any year's touch-up days with the stepper in the planner. You always enter whole days. The suggestion stays visible beside your figure, and Use the suggested N puts it back.
How they are priced and paid for
Touch-up days are priced at your labour sell rate, worked out from your cost rate and margin, and they always appear on their own line, separate from the repaint. The client pays for the touch-up days actually used each year. Days that aren't used carry over to the next year, in whole days, and any still unused by the end of the final year lapse.
Building washes
Switch washes on in the planner and choose how often: every 3 years by default. A wash year includes an exterior wash of every building painted before that year. With the default, year 3 washes the buildings painted in years 1 and 2.
A wash is priced from your own measurements, exactly as if you had measured each external surface as wash-only: the same wash rate, the same allowance for roof pitch and narrow trim, and the same minimum time per surface. Internal areas are never washed. Excluded surfaces, optional areas and items priced by the piece are left out.
The yearly price adjustment
Year 1 is priced at today's prices. From year 2, prices move by the index you chose:
- Consumer Price Index (the default): the official CPI for your market, such as the ABS index in Australia, BLS CPI-U in the United States, the ONS CPI in the United Kingdom, Stats NZ in New Zealand or Statistics Canada.
- A construction-cost index: follows labour and material costs more closely.
- A fixed percentage: for example 3% a year, agreed up front.
Surfacely never forecasts an index. The proposal names the index and the period it refers to, for example the 12-month change to the latest quarter published before each program anniversary. When a year comes round, you look up the published figure and use it. If no figure has been published, that year stays at the previous year's prices. A fixed percentage is the one exception, because the figure is the agreement itself.
Worth knowing: committees trust what they can check. Naming an official index, and showing touch-up days as their own line in days and hours, answers most of the questions a board will ask before they ask them.