Mike
there is mo such thing as free service or free advice

He is charging you higher than others because he 'does not" charge you
for meeting

Those cheaper ones are gping to charge you for all

So if I were you:
1) I will try to quantify all those free services in hours
2) then calculate the real "cost/hour"

But more importantly which you never mention:
how good is the work?

as project manager, you spent too much time talking about rates while
you never bother to check whether he is on time, on budget or delivering
good quality product


Alos I wonder how you can mention: "large clinical database" while you
are only using Filemaker with one developer

This is only a small database I think


Mike Sampieri wrote:

On 11/19/2005 5:32 PM, Mike Sampieri wrote:

Mike,

Free project management alone is worth it. Here is what i would do.
Ask him for a set of metrics (whatever metrics interest you) make sure
that he provides them to you on a dashboard so you and management can
view the information at any time. Also ask that he document all
processes and creates user guides so that should the relationshhip end
you have a way of getting someone else up to speed on what he has been
doing. remember get what you are paying for and if anything he says he
will provide to you does not make sense ask him to explain why you
should pay for it and what the service will encompass.

Bob
Yes I have done consulting so I know what I am talking about.

On 6/8/2010 1:55 PM, Bob wrote:

I've never heard of hourly work including free anything. Hourly is
hourly. If you hire me per-hour, then you will be paying for every hour
of my time. Now, do I charge for every minute I spend fixing bugs after
deployment -- not if it should have been done correctly in the first
place within the same billed time and I'd already billed for testing it.
And there are other times I'll throw in a freebie here and there -- I
don't bill for every single call or every single tweak.

But free tech support? No. Free project management? Not usually
(project management can include phone or in-person meetings,
communication with clients and/or sub-contractors, creation of
estimates, requirements documents, other documentation, etc).

I might be more inclined to throw in more freebies if I were charging
$175 (I charge $150), but you are very likely getting quite a deal
(depending on his/her skill).