In my experience, the dirt work (building the pad), electrical, plumbing, concrete work, insulation, etc., were half the cost of our barn build. In other words, those other items doubled the cost of our MD barn. It’s modular, but panels are bolted together, and the barn roofed on site; it’s not delivered in one or two pieces, so hauling it up our driveway was not an issue.
We were responsible for the dirt work, done to the barn company’s specifications, and we used their concrete guy for the footings and the aisle (having the latter paved was an option we wanted), but maybe we could have had someone else do the concrete work.
We had a dirt guy come out and shoot our prospective site with a laser level, and he gave use an estimate of how much rock we needed for the site – the pad has to be larger than the barn, all the way around. We changed our minds about the location when it came time to do the work, and his new estimate was a little less. In the end, it didn’t require as much rock, so the final cost actually came in lower than the estimate. We didn’t have a challenging site.
Just having the guys show up to do the dirt work – bringing in the earth moving equipment, the water truck, the roller, and crew – is a chunk of change, so we took advantage of their being at our place to have them spruce up our driveway (which they had originally installed years earlier). So, if any other such work needs to be done, it might be worth pricing out what it would cost, to take advantage of the crew and equipment already being on site.
