Estimating, cost planning, takeoff and BoQ, for UK contractors
Written contractor-side, for the people who bid and build the work, not the ones who commission it.
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A tender price you can actually stand behind
Read post →What a construction estimating service actually does for a UK contractor
Read post →A guessed takeoff costs you on site. A measured one doesn't
Read post →What a bill of quantities does for a small building contractor that a rough total can't
Read post →All blog posts
Before you commit to a bid date, get the scope nailed down
You get the enquiry on a Tuesday, the client wants a number by Friday. You skim the drawings, price what's obviously there, and send it off. Two...
Read post →Price a job on last year's rates and you'll lose it, or win it and regret it
You've got a rate in your head for concrete, for labour, for a metre of blockwork. It's the rate from the last job you priced. Trouble is, that job...
Read post →When your groundworker's rate and your bricklayer's rate don't add up, the tender's already broken
You price the groundworks yourself on a Monday. Your quantity surveyor prices the superstructure on a Wednesday. Your subcontractor prices the M&E...
Read post →The job's on site. Is it still making the money you priced it to make?
You win the job, you allow the costs, you get on site. Eight weeks in, someone asks how it's tracking and you genuinely don't know. You've got...
Read post →Pricing a tender this year: what's actually changed and what hasn't
Every year someone tells you pricing has changed completely. Mostly it hasn't. What has changed is quieter than that, and it's the kind of thing that...
Read post →Know the number before you give the client a number
The client asks what the job will cost. You've got a feel for it, a figure in your head based on similar jobs you've done before. You give them that...
Read post →The rushed tender always misses the same things. Here's where they hide
You've got three days to turn a tender around instead of the two weeks it deserves. You price the obvious stuff fast and move on. The job gets won....
Read post →Price it early enough and the number still holds by the time you're on site
You price the job, then the start date slips. Three months later you're finally mobilising, and the rates you priced against aren't the rates you're...
Read post →A guessed takeoff costs you on site. A measured one doesn't
You look at the drawings, form a rough sense of the quantities, and price from that. It's quicker than measuring properly, and most of the time it...
Read post →A tender price you can actually stand behind
You've been here before. The number's due by Friday. You've priced the big-ticket items off memory, guessed the smaller ones, and rounded up a bit...
Read post →What's actually inside your bill of quantities, and why you should be able to check every line
Hand a subcontractor a single lump sum and watch what happens. He can't check it, can't challenge it, and can't tell you which bit of his trade is...
Read post →The handful of things that actually make a tender price hold up
Most tender prices that fall apart don't fall apart because the contractor's bad at his job. They fall apart because the number was built on...
Read post →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...
Read post →Pricing off last year's rates is how you lose money on the next job
You've priced this kind of job before, so you reach for the rate you used last time. It felt right then. The trouble is, "last time" might have been...
Read post →Knowing what's coming in against what you're paying out, stage by stage
A job can be profitable on paper and still put you under. You're paying subbies and suppliers on their terms while you're waiting on a valuation to...
Read post →From drawings to a priced tender, in three steps
Tendering shouldn't need you to become an estimator on top of running your actual jobs. Most contractors don't have a quantity surveyor sitting idle...
Read post →Real measured quantities beat a rough guess, every time
Two estimators can look at the same drawings and come back with two different numbers. One of them measured the job. The other one had a feel for it,...
Read post →Price the job right on day one and the budget holds when you're on site
You quote a fair price. You win the job. Three weeks in, you're covering costs that never made it onto the page, because half your figure was a rough...
Read post →The lines that blow your budget aren't the ones you priced
You priced the job. The rates look right, the total looks fair, and then two months in the budget's gone and you can't point to a single mistake....
Read post →Keeping the budget straight once the job is actually running
Pricing the job was the easy part. The real test is three months in, when half the trades are on site, three things have changed since the tender,...
Read post →What actually happens after you send us your drawings
You've got the drawings, you need a price, and you don't have the hours in the week to measure the job properly yourself. Send them over and it can...
Read post →What you actually get back when we price your job
You send drawings off to get a job priced and you don't know what's coming back, a single total in an email, a spreadsheet you'll have to reformat...
Read post →Pricing the job yourself at midnight, or sending us the drawings
You've priced tenders at your kitchen table before. Two jobs running, a third one on the wall, and a bid due Thursday. You open the drawings after...
Read post →What a quantity takeoff actually is, and why every number in your bid comes from it
Ask five contractors what a takeoff is and you'll get five different answers, most of them close enough, but nobody quite says it in one sentence. So...
Read post →What's actually in a tender submission, and where the risk sits for you
A tender isn't just a price on a page. By the time you submit, you've pulled together a programme, a set of assumptions about what's included and...
Read post →Estimate, cost plan, takeoff, BoQ: what each one actually is
Ask a contractor to explain the difference between an estimate, a cost plan, a takeoff and a bill of quantities and most will get close, but the...
Read post →Keeping the budget straight from the tender to the last valuation
You win the job on a number you priced weeks or months earlier. Then the job runs, variations turn up, the site's never quite what the drawings...
Read post →Why a price per square metre isn't a price for your job
It's the quickest way to price a job, and it's usually the way it goes wrong. Take the floor area, multiply by a rate you used on the last similar...
Read post →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...
Read post →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...
Read post →Pricing an extension or refurb job without guessing half of it
Extension and refurb jobs get priced on the back of a fag packet more than almost anything else in the trade. The drawings are often thinner than a...
Read post →What actually makes an estimate accurate
Every contractor wants an accurate estimate. Not many can say precisely what makes one accurate, beyond "getting it right", which isn't much use when...
Read post →Your Estimate Is the Job Before the Job
Every job starts twice. Once on paper, once on site. If the paper version is loose, the site version costs you money. An estimate is not a guess...
Read post →When the Drawings and the Build Both Sit on Your Desk
Some jobs come to you as a finished set of drawings and a fixed scope. Others come to you as a brief and a budget, with the drawings still to be...
Read post →The Budget Is Your Job to Hold, Not Just Report
Every project has a budget before it has a shovel in the ground, and somebody has to own that number all the way through. On a lot of jobs that job...
Read post →Stop Treating the First Estimate as the Last Word
An estimate priced at the start of a job is a snapshot of costs and conditions on the day it was written. Materials move, programmes slip, and...
Read post →A Tender Price Has to Survive Being Read by Someone Else
A tender estimate gets read by people who were not on the walk round with you. It gets compared line by line against other contractors' numbers, and...
Read post →Building a Budget You Can Actually Stand Behind
A budget is only as good as what it is built from. Pull it together from incomplete drawings and rough guesses on labour and material costs, and you...
Read post →What Actually Goes Into Pricing a Job Before It Goes Out the Door
Every estimate starts the same way: someone has to actually read the drawings and the specification properly before a single rate goes on the page....
Read post →The Difference Between a Rough Number and a Proper Price
Plenty of prices get put together on the back of a rough take-off and a gut feel for rates. That is fine for talking to a client about roughly what a...
Read post →Where the Money Gets Lost as a Job Moves Through Its Stages
The first place a job can go wrong is before you have even won it. A price built in a hurry at tender stage, with quantities rushed and rates copied...
Read post →Why Your Estimate Needs to Change as the Job Gets Real
Every job starts with a rough figure, priced against limited information, just to get a sense of what something might cost. The mistake is treating...
Read post →Stop Submitting Prices You Priced Six Months Ago
A price built three or four months ago is already carrying rates that may have moved. Material costs shift, labour rates change, supplier quotes...
Read post →What We Check Before a Price Goes Out the Door
Before anything gets priced, gather every drawing, the specification, any site survey information and whatever compliance documents exist. Half...
Read post →What's Actually In A Proper Cost Estimate
An estimate is not just a total figure. If you've had one back that's only a number, you've been shortchanged. What you should get is a breakdown by...
Read post →Why Your Price Needs A Proper Breakdown, Not Just A Total
Most disputes on site don't start because the total price was wrong. They start because nobody can say what the total was actually made up of. A...
Read post →The Checklist We Run Before Committing To A Price
Before anything gets costed, make sure the scope is nailed down. Half finished drawings, missing specification pages and a "TBC" on the finishes...
Read post →The Only Estimating Kit That Actually Matters On Site
Every year there's a new piece of software promising to change how you price jobs. Most of it doesn't matter if the basics are wrong. The first thing...
Read post →How We Turn An Enquiry Into A Submitted Price
A tender enquiry comes in with a deadline attached and usually a stack of drawings that need sorting before anything can be priced. The first job...
Read post →Pricing A Package When Half The Information's Missing
As a subcontractor you're usually working from a cut down set of drawings and a specification section that references other packages you can't see....
Read post →Sense Checking A Price Against Your Own Job History
A price for a job means little until you check it against something. The most useful comparison isn't a published cost guide, it's your own past...
Read post →Breaking a Job Down Before You Price It
Most cost breakdowns fall apart before anyone's even opened the drawings properly. You get handed a package, a deadline, and a client who wants a...
Read post →Getting the Cost Plan Right Before You Start Pricing
A cost plan isn't something you write once at tender stage and file away. It's a working document that follows the job from the first drawings...
Read post →What Actually Needs Checking Before You Price a Job
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...
Read post →What Cost Planning Actually Means When You're Pricing the Job
Cost planning and estimating get used interchangeably, but they're not the same job. Estimating is putting a price on a defined scope of work. Cost...
Read post →How We Actually Build Up a Price for a Job
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...
Read post →Keeping Cost Control Once the Job's Actually Running
A lot of cost control effort goes into getting the number right before the job starts, then stops the moment the first fix goes in. That's backwards....
Read post →Quantity Takeoff, and Why It's Worth Getting Right
Quantity takeoff is the process of measuring exactly how much of each item a job actually needs, straight off the drawings, before any rate gets...
Read post →What Actually Moves Your Price Between Tender and Final Account
You price a job on a Tuesday. By the time you're on site six weeks later, half your numbers are wrong. That's not bad luck, it's the nature of...
Read post →Why Contractors Lose Tenders They Should Have Won
Plenty of contractors lose tenders on price when the real problem was never the number, it was everything around the number. A submission that turns...
Read post →The Job on Every Tender Nobody Has Time to Do Properly
Every contractor ends up doing estimating at some point, usually late at night, usually squeezed between running current jobs and looking at a new...
Read post →Cost Plans That Still Hold Up Once the Job Is Running
A cost plan is only useful if it survives contact with the actual job. Too many get built in a rush before tender and then quietly ignored once work...
Read post →Keeping Your Job's Numbers Honest From Start to Finish
A price at tender is a snapshot. The job itself moves, variations land, programmes slip, and a contractor who isn't tracking cost against that...
Read post →What You're Actually Getting When You Send Drawings Out for Pricing
Send a set of drawings out for an estimate and you'll get back very different things depending on who measured it. Some come back as a single lump...
Read post →The Real Cost of Doing Your Own Take-offs Between Jobs
Every hour you spend measuring quantities off a drawing is an hour you're not running your current job or chasing the next one. Contractors rarely...
Read post →From drawings to measured quantities: how a takeoff actually gets built
You hand a job over to be taken off and what should come back is quantities you can actually price against, not a rough guess with a tidy cover page....
Read post →What a construction estimating service actually does for a UK contractor
You've heard the phrase "construction estimating service" for years without really needing one. Then a tender lands with a bid date you can't hit on...
Read post →Building estimating service or your own guesswork, what actually changes
Every builder can price a job off the top of their head. The question isn't whether you can do it, it's what changes when you don't have to.
Read post →An estimating service built around how builders actually work
Most estimating services were built for someone with an office and a QS down the corridor. An estimating service for builders has to work...
Read post →Construction cost estimating that holds up when a contractor's name is on the tender
When your company's name goes on a tender submission, the number underneath it has to survive someone else checking it, a client's QS, a main...
Read post →Construction estimating for small builders without an estimator on the books
A small building firm doesn't have the volume of tenders to justify an estimator on the payroll, but the jobs still need pricing properly. That gap...
Read post →A builders' estimating service that prices the whole job, not just the headline
A headline figure is easy to produce. Pricing the whole job, so that figure actually holds up once you're on site, is the harder part, and it's what...
Read post →Freelance construction estimator or an estimating service, what actually differs
Looking for help pricing a job, you'll come across two options that sound similar: a freelance construction estimator working alone, or an estimating...
Read post →A construction takeoff service that measures what's actually on the drawing
A takeoff is only as good as how closely it follows the drawing in front of it. A construction takeoff service earns its keep by measuring exactly...
Read post →What you get from a quantity takeoff service before you price a job
Before a job gets priced, someone has to work out how much of everything it actually needs. A quantity takeoff service is that step, done properly,...
Read post →Tender pricing support for builders who haven't got a QS on the payroll
Pricing a tender without a quantity surveyor in the office means the measuring, the pricing and the actual submission all fall on you, on top of...
Read post →A construction estimating service built for small builders, not big contractors
A lot of estimating services are really built around large contractors with several tenders running at once. A service built for small builders has...
Read post →An estimating service for residential builders pricing extensions and refurbs
Residential work, extensions, refurbishments, loft conversions, gets treated by some estimating services as an afterthought behind commercial...
Read post →Construction estimates built from drawings, not from a rough idea
There's a real difference between an estimate built from a conversation about the job and one built from the actual drawings. Only one of them...
Read post →Pricing an extension, a loft conversion or a house build, the same way every time
Whatever the project, an extension, a loft conversion, a full house build, the job of pricing it properly is the same: measure it off the drawings,...
Read post →Help pricing construction jobs when there isn't time to measure them properly
The jobs that need pricing don't wait for a quiet week. Help pricing construction jobs matters most exactly when there isn't time to sit down and...
Read post →A tender estimate built for a small building contractor, not a national one
A small building contractor bidding against national firms isn't competing on volume. What you can compete on is a tender estimate that's just as...
Read post →A construction takeoff built straight from your PDF drawings
Most drawings arrive as a PDF, scanned, exported from CAD, however they've come to you. A construction takeoff built to work from exactly that means...
Read post →Construction estimating priced to local UK rates, wherever the job is
Material and labour costs move depending on where in the UK a job actually sits. An estimate priced on a national average misses that, and misses it...
Read post →A domestic building estimating service for the jobs main contractors don't touch
Extensions, loft conversions, refurbishments, the domestic end of building work rarely interests a large contractor, but it still needs pricing with...
Read post →An estimating service for builders, wherever in the UK the job is
A builder in one part of the country shouldn't get a lesser service than one somewhere else. An estimating service worth using has to work the same...
Read post →Why a rough estimate costs a small builder more than the fee for a proper one
It feels like the cheaper option: price the job yourself, save the fee, submit the tender. The maths only works out that way if the rough estimate...
Read post →What a bill of quantities does for a small building contractor that a rough total can't
A single number on a tender tells a client what the job costs. A bill of quantities tells them why, and that difference matters more to a small...
Read post →Cost planning for a self-build or small development, before the drawings are even final
The earlier a realistic cost figure exists, the fewer expensive surprises there are later. Cost planning for a self-build or a small development...
Read post →Quantity takeoff for an extension, measured the same way as a full house build
An extension is a smaller job, but it isn't a simpler one to measure properly. A quantity takeoff for an extension follows the same method as one for...
Read post →What actually slows down pricing a job when you're doing it yourself at night
It isn't that pricing a job is hard. It's that doing it after a full day on site, at night, with a deadline the next morning, turns a job that should...
Read post →A bill of quantities every subcontractor prices from the same document
Get five subcontractors pricing off five different descriptions of the same package and the quotes that come back won't be comparable. A single bill...
Read post →Cost planning that survives the drawings changing halfway through
Drawings rarely stay exactly as first issued. A cost plan that only works while nothing changes isn't much use on a real project, where revisions...
Read post →Estimating a loft conversion or extension without a rate book from three years ago
A lot of loft conversions and extensions get priced off a rate the builder's carried for years, updated occasionally when a job clearly costs more...
Read post →What a proper quantity takeoff catches that a quick measure off the plan misses
A quick measure off a plan, a rough scale-up of the obvious elements, feels like enough when time's short. What it misses is usually smaller than the...
Read post →Cost planning and a bill of quantities, working from the same set of numbers
A cost plan produced early and a bill of quantities produced later should tell the same story about a job. When they're built separately, by...
Read post →The Tender's Due and There's No Time to Measure It All. Here's How to Get the Takeoff Done.
You know the night. The kids are down, the site's locked up, and the drawings are on the kitchen table with a bid date on them. You've been running...
Read post →One missed line can eat your margin. Here's what gets left off a tender, and how to stop it.
You price a job, you win it, you're happy. Then you get on site and the thing you didn't measure turns up anyway. The work still has to be done, the...
Read post →Guessing your tender price is losing you bids. Here's how to price a job you can stand behind.
There's a trap every contractor knows. Price the job too high and you lose it to someone cheaper. Price it too low and you win it, then bleed money...
Read post →The client wants a proper breakdown, not your scribbles. Here's what a good one looks like.
You've done the sums. You know what the job costs and you know it's a fair price. But when the client asks to see the breakdown, what you've got is a...
Read post →Send your drawings, get a number you can bid from.
Fixed fee agreed up front, priced to NRM2, delivered to your deadline.