- Client
- Main contractor
- Sector
- Residential
- Scope
- Bill of quantities, tender pricing
- Contract value
- £4.2m
- Turnaround
- 9 working days
TEMPLATE CONTENT — replace before publishing. A full bill of quantities and tender price for a 14-unit residential development, delivered in nine working days against a fixed submission deadline.
The brief
A main contractor came to us with a tender already in progress and eleven days left on the clock. The scheme was fourteen units across two blocks, with a partial basement and a landscaped courtyard. Their own estimator was committed to another bid.
The challenge
The drawings were a mix of revisions and the structural package had been reissued twice without a clear change log. Pricing "as drawn" would have meant pricing two different buildings in places.
- Reconcile the architectural and structural packages before measuring
- Identify and query the discrepancies rather than absorb them
- Produce a full measure, not a rate-per-square-metre approximation
- Leave enough time for the contractor to review before submission
What we did
We reconciled the packages first and issued a short schedule of discrepancies as tender queries on day two, which meant the client had answers before we reached those sections. The bill was measured in full, with preliminaries built up from the contractor's own programme rather than applied as a percentage.
The outcome
The tender was submitted a full day early with a documented schedule of assumptions and exclusions. The queries raised on day two turned out to cover a genuine omission in the structural package, which was corrected for all bidders.
Outcome figures are placeholders. Replace with the real result, and only publish client details you have permission to use.