Saved estimates assembled into a bill of quantities, with every line traceable.
Costing and commercial control. 5 questions answered below, each with the arithmetic behind it and the limits of what the tool decides. Open the BOQ and Quote Generator tool.
A bill of quantities is a list of measured work with descriptions, units and rates, and its value is that every line can be traced. This generator builds those lines from the quantities the calculators produce, so a bill is a presentation of measured work rather than a document typed out beside it. The consequence is that a line can be defended. When a client asks why the blockwork is a particular figure, the answer is a wall, a set of openings and a block size, and the bill can show it. Where an estimate changes, the bill changes with it, because the lines are generated rather than transcribed. What the generator does not do is measure the job, price the risk or sign off the total as a quantity surveyor would.
A bill of eleven lines for a small extension: excavation, concrete, blockwork, roof structure, covering, plaster, screed, doors, windows, electrical and plumbing. Blockwork of fifty nine square metres at a rate you set, concrete of fifteen cubic metres at yours, and each other line following its own measurement. Add five percent contingency as a line, leave tax undetermined where no rule applies, and the total is the sum of eleven traceable lines. Change the wall height and the blockwork line and everything downstream of it move, because it was generated rather than typed.
From the calculators. Each line records what was measured, in the unit that trade is measured in, at the quantity the calculation produced. The descriptions come from the measurement rather than from a template, which is what makes a line defensible when a client queries it. Nothing appears in the bill that was not measured somewhere in the system.
Contingency is a line you add, and tax is reported as undetermined unless a rule applies to your market. Neither is applied silently, because a bill is a document a client prices against and a client is entitled to see what is in it. A contingency folded into rates is invisible, and an assumed tax rate is wrong in most jurisdictions it is applied to.
Yes, and that is the point of generating rather than typing. The line carries the quantity, the unit and the description that produced it, so a query about the blockwork can be answered with a wall length, a height, an opening schedule and a block size. A bill that cannot be defended line by line is a negotiation rather than an estimate.
No. A quantity surveyor measures, prices risk, structures contracts and takes responsibility for the figures. The generator presents measured work as a bill, which removes the transcription step and the errors that come with it. It does not replace the judgement about what to measure, how to price the risk or how to structure the contract.
The lines regenerate. A changed measurement produces a changed line, and the rates you set stay where they are, so the bill reflects the new quantity at the price you had agreed with yourself. Where a change was agreed with the client, that is a variation rather than a regeneration, and it needs its own record so the original bill remains visible.