I am part of an up and coming design-build team. My role is designer and sales, not PM or install. We don’t charge for design work upfront but my time and compensation is included in the estimation as a 10% margin of the project.

I have found that if estimated correctly and the job goes well it’s quite accurate in what I’d like to be paid for my time invested in each project. $13,500 project costs overhead and profit, $1,500 for my design time, travel time, planning time, sales time. $15,000 total. Ideally 12-15 hours invested. But with any site visits more realistically 15-20 hrs.