Sense Checking A Price Against Your Own Job History

Why A Number On Its Own Tells You Nothing

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 jobs, what you actually spent on a similar scope, on similar ground, with a similar programme. That comparison catches the item that's priced too low long before the client's QS does.

Keep Your Own Numbers, Not Just The Published Ones

Published cost guides move slowly and rarely match your own experience of what things actually cost to build in a particular region or on a particular type of site. If you keep a record of what your last few jobs actually cost, broken down the same way each time, you build something far more useful than any external guide, a set of figures you know is accurate for how you actually work.

Comparing Like With Like

A comparison only works if the categories match. If your own cost records aren't broken down the same way as the new price, measured under NRM2 with the same elements each time, you're comparing two different things and the check is worthless. Consistency in how jobs are recorded matters more than how detailed any single record is.

What Moves The Number

Material prices, labour availability and ground conditions all shift a price away from what a similar job cost last year. Before deciding a rate looks wrong, check whether the market's actually moved or whether the new job simply has a genuine complication the last one didn't. Both are common, and mixing them up leads to the wrong conclusion.

Using This On The Next Tender

The point of keeping your own job history isn't to look backwards for its own sake. It's so that when the next enquiry lands, someone can sense check the price against real experience before it goes out the door, rather than finding out it was wrong once the job's under way.

If you want your next price checked against a proper breakdown, Send your drawings. If you want to see what a comparable breakdown looks like, See a sample estimate.

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