What it costs, and what it sells for.
Most cost plans give you a total. Ours breaks cost, mark up, sell and profit on every line, so when the number has to come down you can see which lines are carrying the margin and which have nothing left to give.
What we deliver
- —A multi sheet workbook priced in NRM order
- —Cost, mark up, sell and profit broken down on every line, not applied once at the bottom
- —Mapped to your own or your client's pricing document, so it drops into their format without a reconciliation exercise
- —Options, exclusions, provisional sums and value engineering each scheduled on their own lines
- —Priced from your own quantities, or from a take off we produce alongside it
- —Later stage updates as the design develops, against the same structure
What we watch for
- —An undefined provisional sum quietly moves risk onto the contractor. NRM2 separates defined from undefined. Against a defined sum the contractor is deemed to have allowed for the work in its programme and preliminaries. Against an undefined one it is deemed not to have, so time and prelims come back later as a claim. Which of the two you write decides who carries it.
- —Value engineering netted off the total cannot be sold back. Once a saving disappears into the bottom line, nobody can see what was given up to get there, and nobody can put it back when the client changes their mind. On its own line it stays a decision rather than a fact.
- —A cost plan in your structure and a pricing document in theirs will never reconcile. Two formats, one number, and every review meeting spent arguing about which line maps to which instead of whether the price is right. The mapping is the cheap part if it is done once, at the start.
- —Mark up applied at the bottom hides which packages are carrying the job. One percentage across the total reads fine and tells you nothing. Broken down per line, it shows you where the margin actually sits, which is the only useful thing to know when a client asks for five percent off.
Cost Plans, answered
Can you work from quantities we already have?
Yes, and it is usually the quicker route. We price from your quantities as they are, and where a quantity looks out of step with the drawing we flag it rather than silently correcting it, because a change we make without telling you is a change you cannot defend. If you would rather we measured it ourselves, the take off can be taken as part of the same instruction.
Will it match our client's pricing document?
That is the point of mapping it. We price in NRM order and then map the output to whatever structure your client has issued, so what you send them is already in their format. Where their document has no home for something, that shows up as an unmapped line rather than being quietly absorbed into the nearest heading, which is how scope goes missing.
How is this different from a cost plan our QS would produce?
In what it shows you rather than what it totals. A consultant's cost plan is generally written to tell the client what the work should cost. Ours is written for the party carrying the risk, so it separates cost from sell on every line and schedules the options, exclusions and value engineering as decisions rather than folding them into a number.
Not the question you had?
Send us the drawings and the return date. We will tell you what we would need and what we would give you back, before anyone commits to anything.
The rest of what we do
Let's discuss your project.
Tell us about your tender or project and we'll show you exactly how we can help you win it, and deliver it.