Construction BOQ & Measurement

The bill

• Sections and items, each with a code, a unit, a quantity and a rate. A rate without a unit is a number nobody can check.

• Revisions supersede each other rather than overwrite, so the tender bill is still readable after six variations. A new revision copies the sections and items and re-points each item at the new revision's section. Each copied item remembers the item it came from, so what was certified on revision 1 is still certified on revision 2: a revision does not turn measured work back into work to be paid for again. For the same reason a revision cannot price an item below what has already been certified against it, and neither a revision nor an agreement happens while a valuation is open.

• Once a bill is agreed it stops being editable. The quantity, the rate and the rate build-up are what was signed; the cost phase still moves, because that is bookkeeping rather than contract. Changing the work is a variation, or a new revision.

• The bill's total is checked against the job's contract value, and any gap is a field on the form. Working to two different contract sums is how a claim is lost.

• A bill with an unpriced item cannot be agreed. A bill with holes in it cannot be valued.

Rate build-ups

An item's rate assembled from labour, material, plant, subcontract and overhead, each with a quantity per unit and a wastage percentage. The difference between the rate charged and the rate built up is a field, not a spreadsheet somebody keeps at home.

The priced bill can be pushed into the job's cost budget, split by cost type from the build-up. Pricing a bill and then typing the budget again is how a contractor ends up with two numbers and no idea which is real. It goes once - the date is on the bill and a second push is refused - and approved variation items stay out of it, because their cost already moved with the change order their approval raised.

Interim valuations

A valuation is cumulative. The sheet carries the quantity done to date; this month's money is that minus what was already certified, per item.

• A quantity cannot exceed the bill. Extra work belongs in a variation, where somebody has to approve it. Over-measuring is the single most common overpayment on a construction contract.

• A quantity cannot go backwards: a valuation does not un-measure work. That is an omission variation.

• Two open valuations at once are refused on the whole job, not just on one revision of the bill - that is how the same wall gets measured twice. The number runs per job, and a cancelled valuation keeps the number it was given.

• Only the agreed revision is certified against, and every line is checked again at certification, not only as it is typed.

• A certified sheet is a signed document. After certification the quantities are frozen and only the note can be edited; lines cannot be added or removed, the sheet cannot be deleted or cancelled, and the difference is measured next time. The sheet keeps its own copy of the bill quantity and the rate, so it still reads as it was signed after the bill moves on.

• A valuation that measures less than what was already certified is refused: that needs a credit, not a certificate.

The money leaves through the job

A certified valuation raises the job's own bf.job.billing - with its retainage and its AIA sheet, grouped by cost phase - and marks itself billed. There is no second invoicing path and no second set of numbers to reconcile. An item with no cost phase stops the application, because its money would have nowhere to go.

An application works out what was billed before from the job's invoiced applications, so a second one is refused while the first is still a draft: raising both would bill the same work twice.

Variations

Priced items - added, omitted or re-measured - that count for nothing until they are approved. A pending item is not in the contract sum, not on the valuation sheet and not in the budget; a rejected one is marked omitted, so it stays readable and is worth nothing.

• Approval writes the items into the bill and raises the job's own change order, so the contract value moves in exactly one place. What was approved - or refused - is then frozen: omitting the work later does not rewrite what somebody signed.

• A client instruction must carry the client's own reference, or nobody can match the payment to it later.

• A variation prices and omits items on its own bill, never somebody else's.

• An omission cannot take out work already certified - or already measured on the valuation being written - and paid for. Omitting the whole quantity marks the item omitted; it stays on the bill so the history reads, but it is worth nothing.

• An approved variation cannot be rejected. Raise an omission variation instead.

• Our error is on the list of origins on purpose. A variation register that only records the client's changes is a register nobody believes.

Provisional sums

Marked, kept out of measurement - an allowance is not work anybody did - and adjusted at what they really cost before the final account.

Material reconciliation

What the rate build-ups say should have been used for the quantity measured, beside what was actually bought against the job. The difference is wastage, theft, or a rate that was priced wrong - all three worth knowing before the job finishes. Materials are matched by name - ignoring case and stray spaces, so Cement and cement are one line - because a rate build-up is written by a quantity surveyor in words; the report says so rather than pretending otherwise. The reconciliation is a company's own, like everything else here.

Roles

A quantity surveyor measures, prices variations and raises valuations. The commercial manager agrees the bill, approves variations and turns a certified valuation into money. Those three gates are checked on the server, not only hidden in the form, and a state cannot be written by hand around the buttons. The rate build-up and the margin on an item are the surveyor's: a site user reads quantities and rates, not what the work costs us.

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