[LRUG] Contact Work and setting limits

[james croft]

Slightly off topic, but are any of the freelancers/contractors on the list
willing to share an example of a contract that you get the client to sign?
 Do you just use a standard one each time?  What clauses does it contain
regarding the time/cost estimates given?

2009/10/29 Red Davis <reddavis at gmail.com>

> I'd say charge per day/hour.
>
> Also when giving an estimation on how long something will take, I multiply
> however long I think it will take by 2.5.
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Rob Lacey <contact at robl.me> wrote:
>
>> Hey guys,
>>
>> I wanted to ask for a bit of advice about contract work as I know many of
>> you are contractors or have contracted. I am wrapping up a project with a
>> client which has been troublesome to say the least. I initially quoted 13
>> days to make ammendments to their existing Rails application, and through
>> the process this has stretched to about 32 days work. So I badly misjudged
>> the length of the project, primarily because I hadn't realised how broken
>> their app was and how crazy some of the code was (to me at least), along
>> with requirements creeping in that I should maybe have said no to, and
>> problems post re-launch which may have been there all along but have reared
>> their ugly head only now.
>>
>> The problem being that the client wants a working site, some of the
>> requirements fell outside of the original spec, and delivering a far from
>> finished article at the end of the quoted time was not really an option. I
>> can see from their point of view I quoted a time and price, and delivered
>> the project be it over a longer period of time so they got what they wanted.
>> But from my point of view the work I'm 19 days down which is far from ideal.
>>
>> How does anyone deal with the issue of estimation going horribly wrong?
>> And how would you broach this with the client, obviously they thought it
>> would take only the quoted amount that time, so its a tricky one. Is it fair
>> to approach them and come to some compromise over the cost of the project or
>> do you just pick yourself up, forget it and be more mean (and realistic)
>> with your estimates next time.
>>
>> RobL
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>
>
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