One set of numbers: how your takeoff, BoQ and estimate should line up

Ask where a job's final account figure came from and too often the honest answer is a chain of separate numbers that don't quite match: a rough takeoff, a bill of quantities built separately, an estimate priced off neither of them properly, and a final account that's really being reconciled from scratch. Every gap between those documents is a place a cost can go missing or an argument can start.

How it should work

The takeoff is the measured quantities off the drawings. The bill of quantities lays those same quantities out item by item so they can be priced, checked and compared. The estimate applies rates to those quantities to give you the number you bid. Done properly, all three are the same measured information carried through in one line, not three separate exercises that happen to land near each other.

Why it usually doesn't work that way

It usually breaks down because of time. The takeoff gets done at speed, the bill gets built off a slightly different reading of the drawings, and the estimate ends up reconciling the two rather than being built cleanly from either. None of that is visible at bid stage. It shows up on site when a quantity in the estimate doesn't match what's actually in the bill, and somebody has to work out which one was right.

Why it matters at final account

When the takeoff, the bill and the estimate are the same numbers throughout, your final account is a straightforward comparison of priced quantities against what was actually built and varied. When they're not, final account becomes an exercise in working out where the numbers diverged, usually months after anyone can remember why.

Keeping it as one set of numbers

We measure your job to NRM2 once, and that same measured takeoff underpins the bill of quantities and the priced estimate, so every document you're working from, right through to the final account, is built on the same numbers. Send us the drawings you've got and you'll get quantities that carry straight through the job instead of three versions that need reconciling later.

Send your drawings and get one set of measured numbers that holds from tender to final account, not three that need chasing back together.

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