Automatic BQ pricing

The bill of quantities has officially been with us in the UK for in excess of 150 years. During that time it has served the construction industry well in its primary role of enabling tenders to be submitted on an equal basis. The industry's clients, however, have usually wanted, and often needed, to know their financial commitment in advance of tenders being received. Numerous techniques have evolved over the years to provide this information. The method chosen would seem to depend on several criteria such as the time and level of information available. At a very early stage a method based upon rates per unit of floor area may well be used for a building price forecast, but once a bill of quantities has been produced, this may then be priced to provide the client with what is usually assumed to be a far more accurate estimate. Unfortunately, pre-tender estimates based on bills of quantities, while being fairly accurate, are also extremely time consuming and tedious to produce. Clearly, any method which reduces the time involved in prioring bills of quantities without significantly reducing accuracy is likely to be of benefit. The study described in this report aimed to achieve this by developing a set of algorithms for pricing bills of quantities items as a precursor to a fully automatic pre tender pricing system.