Keeping a job's cost under control once you're on site

The tender's won, the job's started, and now the real work of keeping it inside budget begins. Winning the bid is the easy part compared to holding the number together through weeks of variations, weather, and a site that never quite matches the drawings.

Know what you actually priced

The single biggest thing that keeps a job under control is being able to go back to the original measured quantities and see exactly what was priced and what wasn't. If your takeoff was measured properly at tender stage, you've got something solid to check every valuation against. If it was guessed, you're managing a moving target from week one.

Price variations the same way you priced the job

A variation that gets agreed on site with a verbal figure and sorted out "later" is how jobs lose money quietly. Every variation should be measured and priced the same way the original job was, against the same rates, so it sits properly in the account instead of becoming an argument at final account stage.

Check valuations against measured quantities, not memory

It's easy to let a valuation go through on a general sense of how the job's progressing. It's much harder to argue with a valuation checked against actual measured quantities and percentage complete on each element. That takes more time upfront, but it's the difference between knowing where you stand and finding out at the end.

Don't let material orders drift from the priced quantities

A common way cost control slips is the material order creeping ahead of the priced quantity, usually because nobody checked the order against what was actually measured and priced. Keeping the order and the priced takeoff aligned catches that before it becomes a cost you're absorbing.

All of this is easier when the job started with quantities that were properly measured, not rushed through the night before a bid was due. A takeoff measured to NRM2 gives you a baseline you can actually manage against for the whole life of the job, not just at tender stage.

Send your drawings for the next one and we'll measure it properly from the start, so you've got a real number to control the job against, not a guess you're hoping holds.

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