What Actually Needs Checking Before You Price a Job

Scope first, numbers second

Before anything gets priced, the scope needs to be nailed down in writing. What's included, what's excluded, who's supplying what. A vague scope means every item you price is a guess, and guesses don't hold up when a variation dispute lands on your desk mid-contract.

Labour and materials, priced separately

Don't fold labour and materials into one figure per item. Price them apart so you can see where the risk actually sits. Material costs move with the market, labour costs move with availability and site conditions, and if they're mixed together you can't tell which one's eating your margin until it's too late.

Prelims and site set-up

Site set-up, welfare, plant on hire, supervision, all the costs that sit outside the measured work but still have to be paid for every week the job runs. These get missed more often than any measured item because they don't show up on a drawing. Price them against the actual programme, not a rough guess at duration.

Professional fees and third-party costs

Where the job carries costs for surveys, inspections, or other third-party input outside the build itself, these need a proper line in the checklist rather than being buried in "general costs". Buried costs are the ones nobody remembers until the invoice turns up.

Contingency, priced honestly

Contingency isn't a padding figure added to make a client feel better. It should reflect the actual gaps and unknowns in the information you were given at pricing stage. The thinner the drawings, the higher the contingency needs to be, and that relationship should be explainable, not arbitrary.

Site conditions and access

Ground conditions, access restrictions, working hours, anything site-specific that affects how the work gets done. These get missed when a checklist is copied from job to job without anyone walking the actual site.

Review before it goes anywhere

Once the checklist's been worked through, go back over it against the drawings one more time before it's submitted. This final pass, done properly and not rushed, is what separates an estimate that holds up from one that unravels on site.

Built on 25+ years contractor-side. Send your drawings if you want this checklist run against your next tender.

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