Budget the site office. Drop it in the bid.

A site office goes into general conditions as months on site times the monthly lines, plus delivery and pickup as two lump sums. The calculator on this page prices that for any JOLT office or storage unit at your job ZIP, lays it out as Division 01 bid lines with the date it was priced, and copies it as columns you can paste into the estimate.

Everything here is free and needs no sign-up. The spec sheets and plan blocks further down are the same figures in a form you can print, attach to a submittal or drop into a site plan.

How do you budget a site office in general conditions?

Five steps take the office from a guess to a line an owner's reviewer can check:

1. 01

   Count the months

   Run the office from the week the crew mobilizes to the last week anyone works out of it, and check the unit's minimum term for the job's state.
2. 02

   Pick the build

   Choose the office or storage size from the spec sheets by what the trailer has to hold and run, such as a bathroom or an off-grid battery.
3. 03

   Carry the monthly lines

   Carry rent, the damage waiver and the environmental fee as monthly lines under 01 52 13, stepping each up at the anniversary in a job longer than a year.
4. 04

   Carry mobilization

   Carry delivery and pickup for the job ZIP as lump sums under 01 71 13; outside the published delivery areas, ask for the written project quote.
5. 05

   Date the number

   Copy the lines with the date they were priced, and lock the figures for 14 days by email if the bid is going out soon.

The term

Start with time, because almost every figure in the budget is a monthly figure. Count from the week the crew mobilizes to the last week anyone works out of the trailer, and allow for punch list and closeout, when the office is often still the place the paperwork lives. A job that runs past twelve months needs its second year carried at the stepped-up rate.

Then check the minimum term, which each spec sheet prints for its own unit. Outside Colorado every unit carries a 12-month minimum, so a short out-of-state job is budgeted at that minimum even if the work is shorter.

The build

Pick the build next. The office comparison sets the four office builds side by side: the Base runs on a 50-amp shore-power inlet, the Grid-Free carries a 10 kWh battery pack that runs the HVAC with no shore power, the Alpine adds the mountain envelope, and the 40 ft office has an enclosed bathroom at the far end. Storage sizes from 10 ft to 40 ft sit on the same calculator for the tool crib and the material container.

The monthly lines

Rent is the published monthly rate for each unit. Two fees ride on it every month, and both belong in the same section as the rent rather than in a contingency:

• The damage waiver is 12% of rent plus any recurring upgrades.
• The environmental fee is 5% of rent plus recurring upgrades, figured on its own and not on top of the waiver.

Each anniversary of the delivery date steps the rates up by 5%, so the calculator writes one row per year of the term instead of hiding the step inside an average. A bid reviewer can see month 13 change on its own row.

Mobilization and demobilization

Delivery and pickup are separate charges, each billed once per unit. In Colorado the fee depends on the delivery zone of the job ZIP, from $450 each way in Zone A near the yard; the delivery zones page has every zone and town. Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and Montana are priced at $3,495 a leg for units up to 20 ft; a 40 ft unit costs more, and the calculator prints its exact leg. Anywhere else, the project desk quotes both legs in writing, and the calculator says so instead of printing a number it does not have.

The reservation deposit is not a cost line. It is credited to the first invoice, so it moves cash earlier without changing the total, and the calculator notes it under the table rather than adding it.

Price the site office for your job

Choose the build or size, the number of units, the months on site and the job ZIP. The table answers with the bid lines a general-conditions budget expects: section number, description, quantity, unit, unit price and amount, with a total at the foot that is the delivered-price engine's own total for the term.

<iframe src="https://joltrents.com/embed/estimator-budget/" title="Site office budget calculator for estimators by JOLT Mobile Offices &amp; Containers" width="100%" height="900" style="border:0;width:100%;max-width:100%" loading="lazy"></iframe><p style="margin:6px 0 0;font-size:14px"><a href="https://joltrents.com/estimators/#budget">Site office budget calculator for estimators</a> by JOLT Mobile Offices & Containers</p><script async src="https://joltrents.com/embed.js"></script>

The defaults are assumptions you should change: the first office build, one unit, its minimum term and the yard's own ZIP in Gypsum. A ZIP you already typed elsewhere on the site is picked up when the calculator loads.

"Copy the bid lines" puts the table on the clipboard as tab-separated text. It pastes into a spreadsheet as columns, with the money columns as plain numbers, and the line above the table says which Price Book revision and which day the figures came from. When the bid is going out soon, send the budget to your email: the same lines arrive with a 14-day price lock and a link that reserves at those figures.

Spec sheets and CAD blocks

Every office build and storage size has a printable sheet, a one-page PDF and a plan-view drawing block in DXF and SVG. The sheet prints rent, minimum term, reservation deposit, delivery window, size, and height where the catalog gives one; office sheets add power, heat and cooling, and the bathroom. The list of what the catalog includes is printed in full under the figures, so a reviewer reads the same lines the product page shows.

The drawing is a plan view in feet: the unit's outline at the end of its straight-line delivery run, the 12 ft clear lane, and the 16 ft gate opening where the truck turns. The DXF is an AutoCAD R12 ASCII file with three layers, JOLT-UNIT, JOLT-APPROACH and JOLT-TEXT, so you can freeze the approach once the unit is placed. Doors and windows are not drawn, because their positions are not published for every unit.

Two things stay off every sheet. Unit weights are not published, and neither is the 40 ft office's height; the sheet says so at its foot instead of leaving a blank that reads as zero. Each file name carries a short code that changes whenever the file's contents change, so a sheet already saved to a bid folder is never quietly replaced by a newer one.

What the site plan has to show

The straight run on the drawing comes from section 5.2 of the Rental Agreement Terms: about 70 feet of straight-line truck clearance for a 20 ft unit and about 100 feet for a 40 ft unit. No shorter figure is published for the 10 ft and 12 ft boxes, so their drawings plan the 20 ft run.

The same section asks for a firm, level, well-drained surface, adequate overhead clearance, road width and turning room for the truck, and every underground and overhead utility located and marked. The delivery space answer and the site preparation answer go further into the ground, the access and what to have ready on delivery day.

Carrying the office through the job

Code each unit to one job address. Every order names its delivery address, and moving a unit needs written consent under the Rental Agreement Terms, so the address doubles as the cost code for the months that follow. Rent runs until the unit is picked up, not until the last day of work, and after the minimum term section 3.2 of the terms asks for 15 days' written notice of pickup. That is why the pickup request belongs early on the closeout checklist rather than at the end of it.

For the books, the job cost answer explains how Treasury regulation 1.460-5 and FAR 31.205-36 treat rent on a contract, and the deduction answer covers the return. Sales tax on the rent depends on the state and often the city where the office sits: see the Colorado answer, the Mountain West answer, and the Texas, Arizona, California and Florida answer. Every rate in the budget comes from the Price Book revision of September 25, 2026.