How We Actually Build Up a Price for a Job

It starts with the drawings, not the calculator

An estimate is only as good as the information behind it. Before any rate gets applied, the drawings and specification need to be read properly, gaps identified, and anything unclear flagged rather than assumed. Assumptions made here get baked into the price whether they're right or wrong.

Measuring the quantities

Once the scope is clear, quantities get taken off against NRM2 so the measurement lines up with how the job will eventually be valued on site. This is the part that determines everything downstream. Get the quantities wrong and no amount of careful rate-setting afterwards will save the estimate.

Applying rates that reflect the actual job

Rates aren't pulled from a generic table and applied blind. Labour rates need to reflect the actual programme and site conditions, material rates need to reflect current supplier pricing, and plant rates need to reflect what's actually required for the access and ground conditions on that specific job. A rate that worked on the last job doesn't automatically work on this one.

Building up labour, plant, materials and overheads

Each of these gets priced against the element it belongs to rather than folded into one figure. This build-up is what lets you see, later, exactly where a job's margin came from or where it disappeared to. Skip the build-up and you're left with a single number you can't interrogate when something goes wrong.

Checking the estimate before it goes anywhere

Before submission, the whole estimate gets checked back against the drawings: quantities against the schedule, nothing priced twice, nothing left off. This is the step most often dropped under deadline pressure, and it's the step that catches the mistakes that would otherwise only surface once the job's already underway.

This is the process behind every estimate we put together, built on 25+ years contractor-side. Send your drawings and we'll build the estimate the same way.

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