Stop the job running away from you before it's even started

The job's three weeks in and the numbers stop adding up. Materials are running ahead of what was allowed, a trade's cost more than the rate you priced, and there's an item on site that somehow never made it into the original figure at all. Now you're managing a problem that started weeks before the first spade went in the ground.

Most budget overruns aren't a site problem. They're a tender problem that hasn't shown up yet.

Where the overrun actually starts

If the quantities were guessed rather than measured, the job needed more material than you allowed for, and you won't know until it's ordered. If the rates were carried from an old job, the margin was thinner than you thought from day one. If something got missed entirely, whether it's an attendance, a preliminary, or a fiddly item that didn't make it into a rushed take-off, that cost doesn't disappear. It just turns up later, at the worst possible time, as a shortfall you're now absorbing.

A measured number closes the gap before it opens

The fix isn't better site management. It's a number that was right in the first place. When quantities are measured off the drawings element by element, to NRM2, and priced against current UK rates, there's no gap between what you allowed for and what the job actually needs. The number you tendered on is the number the job holds you to, and it was accurate from the start.

What that buys you on site

This is the real value of a proper estimate: it moves the risk back to where it belongs, before the contract's signed, not partway through it. You go into the job knowing the figure was built on real quantities, not a hopeful multiplier, so when something on site does move, you're managing an exception rather than firefighting a number that was never right to begin with.

Send your drawings and we'll measure the job properly before you commit to a price, so the overrun never gets a chance to start. Send your drawings for a fixed fee quote, agreed before we start. See a sample estimate to see the kind of detail that closes these gaps.

← Back to the blog