Framing Contractor Rate Calculator for BC

You can frame a house on schedule and still lose money on it. Framing is priced fast, often per square foot off a set of plans, and paid slowly, with a 10% holdback sitting with the builder until well after you've left the site. Add a crew to pay every two weeks, a truck and trailer full of nailers and saws, rain days and a site that isn't ready when you show up, and a rate that "sounds right" can quietly come up short. Here's how to work out a number that covers it all.

Why framing rates are harder to get right

Most framing outfits are paid by the job or by the square foot, but the costs come by the hour: your crew's wages, your truck, your tools and your own time. A simple box goes up fast. A house with a steep roof, vaulted ceilings, lots of corners and a stair to build takes much longer for the same square footage. If your per square foot price isn't built from a real hourly cost, the complicated jobs eat the profit from the easy ones.

Step 1: Add up your monthly overhead

For a small framing crew, the usual costs are:

• Truck payment or lease, fuel, repairs and ICBC, plus a trailer for tools and material

• Tools: framing nailers, compressors, saws, lasers and their payments, repairs and replacement

• Fall protection, harnesses and other safety gear, which has to be kept up and inspected

• Liability insurance, and WorkSafeBC coverage. Framing firms are classified under their own trade, not with general contractors, so look up your classification unit on worksafebc.com. For reference, the 2026 average base rate across all BC industries is $1.55 per $100 of assessable payroll, and framing usually sits well above the average.

• Phone, quoting, office supplies and bookkeeping

• Storage or a yard, if you have one

Step 2: Count your crew's full cost, not just their wage

If you have employees, their cost to you is more than their hourly wage. Add vacation pay, the employer share of CPP and EI, and WorkSafeBC on their payroll. In most cases that adds 10% to 15% on top of wages. Paid hours where nobody can work, like a site that isn't ready, are still paid hours.

Step 3: Set the pay you actually need

Decide what you need to earn in a year before personal tax. If you run as a sole proprietor, your income tax and both halves of CPP come out of that amount, so it needs to be higher than the wage you earned working for someone else.

Step 4: Count your real billable hours

There are roughly 1,870 working hours in a year after holidays and stat days. Framers lose time to weather, waiting on lumber or inspections, moving between sites and quoting. In the Okanagan, winter can slow things down too. Using 70% gives about 1,310 productive hours per person per year.

Step 5: Work out the rate, then turn it into your price

Crew rate = (yearly overhead + your pay + crew cost) ÷ total productive crew hours. Add a profit margin on top. If you price per square foot, track how many crew hours past jobs took per square foot, and multiply.

Example: an owner and one framer in the Okanagan

This is an example only, with round 2026 numbers. Your own costs will be different.

• Your pay: $84,000 a year ($7,000 a month)

• One framer at $35 an hour: about $73,300 a year once vacation pay, employer CPP and EI and WorkSafeBC are added (an estimate)

• Overhead: truck, trailer, fuel and repairs $1,800, insurance $900, storage $300, phone, quoting and office $400, tool payments, repairs and safety gear $1,700. That is $5,100 a month, or $61,200 a year.

• Total to cover: about $218,500 a year

• Productive hours: about 1,310 each, or 2,620 crew hours

• Break-even: about $83 per crew hour

• With a 10% to 15% profit margin: about $92 to $96 per crew hour

• If your past jobs averaged 0.15 crew hours per square foot, break-even labour is about $12.50 per square foot before profit

Now look at it from the sales side. If about 64% of each job is left after your framer's wages and fasteners, this crew needs about $18,900 in billings a month just to break even. At an average labour contract of $16,000, that's a bit over one house a month. A $20,000 month feels good, but it only leaves about $700 after your pay. If a callback, a rain week or a messy roof drops that 64% by 5 points, the same $20,000 month loses money.

Try it with your own numbers in the calculator below. It is loaded with this example. Change any number to match your crew and it shows the monthly billings you need, the number of jobs that takes, and what happens if your margin slips by 5 points.