First Article Inspection Pricing

Hi all, Looking for a bit of direction. A customer we currently produce roughly 75 components for has inquired about costs of first article type inspection reports for all future deliveries of all of these components. They range from as simple as dowel pins, to multi-sheet drawings with hundreds of dimensions. Orders are sporadic- some parts are 4x/yr, others 1x/4yrs. Admittedly they currently do not know exactly what they want, we are working on that, but I'm struggling with how to price-in this process. I've done low level PPAP before (were a PIA) and many simple 3pc FAI which were tedious but no sweat. Mostly in the past I just blanket charged a few hrs at shop rate- letting any time loss ones wash because it was understood these were only happening with first production run of parts. Gotta prove you can do it right to get the business you know. With the prospect of doing this now on every order I foresee what may become a nasty time suck.

As a ref, I sent a local agency one of the mid-complicated parts (90 total dims on print) for a 3rd party inspection quote and they came back at $1k with a fair number of notes about what would not be checked. Is $10 per dim reasonable? Should I charge the same? I mean I am quite certain I could check those 99 in a couple hrs. Add in creating and entering the documentation and I'm at maybe 6 hrs the first time and 3-4 hrs on future runs.

Initially my customer called just expecting I could send them going forward and was a bit remiss I would charge for the process. Admittedly they are a very good customer, so I have no interest in gouging them, but I'm also looking at a current RFQ on 26 assorted parts and Ugh-ing at the thought of weeks of FAIs on all of them.

Any thoughts; care to dish on your own program?

thanks!
-m