Home construction and labour cost

The process of building a house is complicated as it requires the involvement of a lot of professionals whose expertise determines how homey you will find your brand-new place. If we discuss the entire process of home construction, we will have to touch upon so many important angles and aspects, each of which demands a detailed and separate article. Therefore, this one limits its focus to the labor required for the construction of the house’s grey structure and its cost.

Contractor/builder

After finalizing the blueprints of your house and getting them approved by the authorities concerned, the most important part is finding and hiring the right builder or contractor.

You can go about this in three ways:

1. You let your architect find the right contractor, who will take care of hiring laborers and look after the entire construction process
2. You find a contractor yourself and supply them with the designs and give them authority to choose the building material and laborers
3. You find the contractor yourself but provide them with the required building materials to ensure quality

No matter which one of these ways appeals to you more, I would recommend you let the contractor hire the laborers. In certain cases, the contractors can work along legally established lines to complete the construction process in phases and collect their payment as soon as the work is complete. Such contractors are the established ones who have enough revenue and contacts in the market to take care of the work without bothering you at every step of the process. You can also work the other way round and pay the contractor in advance to proceed with the construction process. In any case, the agreement is written and has legal value, where the interests of both the contractor and the owner are protected by law.

The contractor is then responsible for dealing with all the professionals when it comes to wiring and electrification plumbing sanitation, etc. A good contractor would hire laborers for the entire duration of the project rather than getting new ones every week, or worse, every day. This tends to ruin the homogeneity of the structure being built.

Labor Costs

Now let’s get to one of the most important parts of home construction, i.e. labor costs.

At present, the average per-day labor cost is PKR 650, and a skilled mason (aka raj ministry)can be hired for something between PKR 1,000 to PKR 1,200 per day.

Please note that it suits the laborers to deliver one month’s worth of work in 45 days, for obvious reasons, but a good contractor (which can also be the raaj ministry in some cases) will make sure that the construction process is finished in time without costing you too much extra. Since the contractor is aware of the per-day work capacity of the labors, they will ensure that they don’t cheat in any way.

In almost all cases, the contractors commit to the owner when the individual construction phases of the house, for instance, foundation work, will be finished. So if the contractor says 30 days for foundation work, they have to deliver in the committed time. If they fail to do so without valid reasons such as inclement weather or shortage of supplies in the market, you are free to ask questions, and you should!