Bills of quantities

Today, the majority of bills of quantities are produced using proprietary software packages, each system having its own format for inputting dimensions and formulating descriptions. However, knowledge of measurement conventions is useful in order to fully understand and appreciated potential problems in the measurement process.

Measurement practice applied to buildings must be accurate and consistent as even a medium-sized project will generate a large amount of drawn documentation. This will be passed to the quantity surveyor for measurement and it will then be down to the QS to manage the measurement process and determine the presentation style for the bill of quantities.

The bill of quantities will allow for a direct comparison between contractors pricing on a project, but also provides a basis for post contract management, including valuing variations, final account preparation, interim valuations and audit.

This section is maintained by Duncan Cartlidge.

RICS standards: Cost reporting

RICS standards: New rules of measurement

RICS standards: RICS property measurement