Construction virtual assistant: cost per RFI, per draw and per month

On this page

1. Three receipts for the same paperwork
2. What the VA prepares, what your people sign
3. Price per document
4. Cost per active job
5. Calculator: your project manager's evenings
6. One pay application, priced
7. Three contractors, worked through
8. A full-time week, priced by block
9. Permits and inspections
10. Bids and estimating support
11. Numbers to track every Friday
12. The software bill: separate lines
13. The extras on both sides
14. How the agency example bills
15. A 30-minute test before you hire
16. The first month
17. Construction admin terms, in one line each
18. How to hire one here
19. Questions about the cost

Three receipts for the same paperwork

On most small and mid-size construction teams nobody is hired to do the paperwork. The project manager logs RFIs at night, the owner chases insurance certificates on Sunday, and whoever answers the office phone books inspections. When contractors do price the job, they compare a remote assistant with an office administrator or a front-office hire. US government pay data has a job title for both. Each slip prices a full-time employee at the national median, then adds what an employer pays on top of the wage.

Published by Outsourcing Insider, a VA MASTERS company. The agency slip uses VA MASTERS' published construction VA rates, shown because they're public; other agencies' prices vary. About us

1. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025 median pay: secretaries and administrative assistants $48,310 a year ($23.23 an hour); receptionists $38,010 ($18.27). Checked Nov 2026.
1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026, Table 6. Checked Oct 2026.
2. SHRM, 'SHRM Releases 2025 Benchmarking Reports' press release (Oct 15, 2025). Checked Oct 2026.
3. Agency example: VA MASTERS pricing page, checked Oct 2026.

The office administrator slip is the fair comparison for document control, logs and billing support. The front-office slip is there because many trade contractors first hire someone to answer the phone and then hand them the paperwork too. Neither slip includes the cost of finding the person, a desk, a computer or a software seat; the extras table further down adds those on both sides.

What a remote assistant can't replace is anything that needs a body on site: walking the job with the super, signing for a delivery at the gate, meeting the inspector, pinning a revised sheet in the trailer. Everything that happens on a screen or a phone call can move.

What the VA prepares, what your people sign

Put this table in the VA's first-day guide. It protects your licence, your insurance and your contracts, and it costs nothing.

The last row matters on federal and federally assisted jobs covered by the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts: contractors and subcontractors submit certified payrolls every week, with a signed Statement of Compliance (the Labor Department's optional form for this is WH-347). A VA can collect the timesheets, fill the form and check the totals against the wage determination you give it. The signature stays with the person accountable for it, and questions about classifications or rates go to your payroll lead or attorney.

Price per document

The VA's cost is the rate times the minutes. The minutes below are example assumptions for a VA who already knows your platform and your log formats; time your own first two weeks and replace them.

The same 10-minute RFI logged by the office administrator in the first slip, at the loaded $31.38 an hour, costs about $5.23. Logged by your project manager at 9 pm, it costs whatever their hour is worth, plus the evening.

Two things the table can't show. First, the cost of an item that nobody logs: an RFI answered by phone and never written down, or a waiver that wasn't collected before a payment went out. Second, the gap between a log that is current and one that is updated "when there's time". The minutes are small; the value is that someone owns them every day.

Cost per active job

Divide the monthly cost by the jobs whose paperwork the VA keeps. Job counts below are examples; how many one person can carry depends on job size, the number of subcontractors and how many RFIs and submittals each job throws off.

Per-job cost only falls while one person keeps up. The sign that the load is too high isn't a complaint; it's the past-due count on the RFI and submittal logs going up week after week.

A rough way to size the role before you hire: count last month's RFIs, submittals, change orders, purchase orders, inspections and pay applications across all jobs, multiply each by the example minutes above, add an hour a day for email and phone, and divide by the hours in a month. If the answer is under 80 hours, start part-time.

Calculator: your project manager's evenings

For most contractors the real saving isn't an administrator's wage they never paid. It's the hours a project manager, superintendent or owner spends on logs, certificates and invoices instead of on the job or on the next bid. Count one week honestly, then put the numbers in:

One pay application, priced

The monthly draw is where construction paperwork piles up: backup for every line, waivers from every party, certificates that must be current before anyone is paid. Here is one draw on an example job with 12 subcontractors and suppliers, of whom 4 have certificates close to expiry. Minutes are example assumptions.

At the office administrator's loaded rate the same 5.0 hours cost about $158; at a project manager's rate, more. On five active jobs that is five draws a month, every month, plus retainage releases at the end.

The VA doesn't decide which waiver form you use. Waivers usually come as conditional (effective once the payment clears) and unconditional (signed after payment), and some states have their own required forms. Your attorney decides the forms and the order of exchange; the VA follows the checklist you hand over and never releases a payment.

Three contractors, worked through

Example businesses with example volumes, priced with the agency example's rate:

Woodworking, cabinet and millwork shops fit the specialty trade column for admin (quotes, orders, material and hardware ordering, install scheduling, customer updates). Engineering firms fit the general contractor column for document work: drawing registers, report formatting, tender administration and client correspondence. Real estate developers often combine a construction admin role with investor reporting and approval tracking.

A full-time week, priced by block

Where 40 hours of a full-time construction VA typically go at a general contractor, and what each block costs at $6.50–$10.00 an hour. Illustrative split; your job mix decides the real one.

Weekly total: $260–$400. A specialty trade contractor swaps most of the RFI and submittal hours for quotes, scheduling and customer calls.

Permits and inspections

Permits are where one missed date moves the whole schedule, and where the work is mostly waiting and checking. That makes it a good fit for a VA. What the VA does, priced at the example minutes above:

• Application packages: forms filled from your drawings, contracts and contractor details, attachments collected, the package sent to you to review and sign. About an hour each in the example, $6.50–$10.00. The person who signs is responsible for what's in it.
• Status tracking: one sheet with every permit on every job, its number, status, next action and expiry date, checked on the permit office's portal or by phone each week.
• Inspections: booked in the system the jurisdiction uses, the super and crew told, the result logged, a re-inspection booked if it failed. $1.08–$1.67 each in the example.
• Expiry watch: a reminder to the PM well before a permit lapses or needs an extension, with the form ready.

Code questions, plan-review comments that need a design answer and being on site for the inspection stay with your team. Every jurisdiction runs its own portal and its own rules, so give the VA a short sheet per city or county: where to apply, how to book, who to call.

Bids and estimating support

A VA doesn't replace your estimator. It takes the bid admin off them: the bid calendar across active opportunities, invitations to the sub list for each trade, questions and addenda logged and passed on, reminders before the deadline, bids collected and laid out side by side in your comparison sheet, proposal formatting and prequalification documents kept current. All of that sits at the admin rate on this page. At the example 25 minutes per trade, one invitation round for a job with 15 trades is about 6 hours of VA time, or $40.63–$62.50.

The estimator keeps pricing, scope decisions, the choice of sub and the final number. If you also want quantity takeoff from PDF plans or drafting such as shop drawings, that is a design-skilled role, priced at $8–$14 an hour through the same partner, and it gets its own skills test.

Numbers to track every Friday

Paperwork help is easy to measure because every item has a date. Ask for these in a one-page weekly report. You set the targets; there are no honest industry benchmarks to copy.

Our VA KPI scorecard has a blank version to adapt.

The software bill: separate lines

The hourly rate covers the person, not the software. Project platforms (Procore, Buildertrend, Autodesk Build), PDF markup (Bluebeam Revu), accounting (Sage 300 CRE, Sage Intacct, QuickBooks), scheduling (Microsoft Project, Smartsheet), task boards, field service tools for trades (ServiceTitan, Jobber), CRMs and e-signature all bill you per plan, per user, per company or by construction volume, whoever does the work. Check your plan's terms for an extra user before you compare totals. A VA who already knows your platform sits higher in the rate range and needs less time to start.

Give the VA a named login with only the permissions the role needs, two-factor login where offered, and no access to bank accounts or payment approval. Our guide on giving a VA access to accounts walks through it. Remove access the day the role ends; the logs and files stay in your systems.

The extras on both sides

How the agency example bills

• Billed monthly after the work, for hours worked only
• Nothing to pay before you choose your hire
• 30-day trial with each new hire: end it right away, no notice
• After the trial, 30 days' written notice
• Replacement at no extra cost
• A one-time advance payment once you choose your hire, credited against your first invoices and refundable
• Recruitment, placement or setup fee: None
• Bank transfer in USD: No processing fee
• Credit card or PayPal: 4% processing fee

A 30-minute test before you hire

General admin skills don't carry over to construction without the vocabulary. Run this on your shortlist; it costs you half an hour each and tells you more than an interview.

1. Logs (10 minutes): a sample RFI log and three new items from a super's notes. Do they number them, set due dates and flag the one holding up work?
2. Documents (5 minutes): a folder of twelve files with two versions of the same sheet and a superseded spec. Do they find the current versions and say how they'd name and file them?
3. Insurance and waivers (5 minutes): three certificates (one expired, one with the wrong named insured) and a payment list. What do they flag, and to whom?
4. Writing (10 minutes): a follow-up to a sub whose submittal is two weeks late, and a status note to a homeowner whose inspection failed. Look for short, plain sentences and no promises about dates you haven't set.

One answer to listen for: when asked whether they would approve a small change order to save time, the right answer is no, they'd route it. Our interview questions template has more.

The first month

The daily handover is the habit that makes this work: what changed on site today decides what paperwork changes tonight. Our onboarding checklist covers the rest.

Construction admin terms, in one line each

Useful for the job description and for checking a candidate knows the work.

RFI (request for information)

A written question to the design team or owner about the drawings or specs, tracked until answered.

Submittal

Product data, samples or shop drawings sent for the design team's review before work or ordering.

Shop drawings

Detailed drawings from a sub or fabricator showing how they'll build or install a part of the work.

Change order

A signed change to the contract's scope, price or time.

Schedule of values

The contract sum broken into line items, used to bill progress each period.

Pay application (draw)

The periodic bill for work done, with the percentage complete per line and the backup the owner or lender asks for.

Retainage

Part of each payment held back until the work or a milestone is complete, as the contract sets.

Lien waiver

A signed release of lien rights for a payment; conditional waivers take effect when the payment clears, unconditional ones once signed.

Certificate of insurance

A one-page summary of a party's insurance, checked against the limits and wording your contract requires.

Punch list

The list of items still to fix or finish before the job is accepted.

Close-out package

Warranties, manuals, as-built drawings and final waivers handed to the owner at the end.

Certified payroll

Weekly payroll records with a signed Statement of Compliance, required on jobs covered by the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts.

How to hire a construction VA here

Requests from this site go to our recruiting partner, the agency in the example above, at $6.50–$10.00 an hour for construction admin roles:

1. Tell us the job: contractor type, project platform, active jobs, hours to cover and the paperwork from this page.
2. Meet a shortlist: candidates with construction, engineering or project admin backgrounds, tested on construction tasks, usually in about 2 business days.
3. Choose and start: nothing is paid before you choose; billing is monthly, after the work, for hours worked.

The trade-offs: an agency costs more per hour than hiring a freelancer yourself, in exchange for screening, payroll handling and free replacement; the first weeks need your time for logins, checklists and the daily handover.

More: what a dispatcher VA costs (for trades that run crews from a dispatch board), job description templates, part-time vs full-time VA cost and outsourcing vs hiring in-house.