ABSTRACT
The items found in the Preliminaries section of a bill of quantities are usually the most difficult and arbitrary of all to price. Indeed, if all the tenderers' priced bills for any one project could be examined, this section would produce the greatest variation in prices with each estimator having his own idea as to the scale and extent of the costs involved. The nature and the conditions of contract of every job are different and the items encountered in the Preliminaries are therefore necessarily unique to each particular project, and whilst records from previously priced jobs will be useful and will assist in some measure in estimating the cost of the current set of Preliminaries, they can, at best serve only as a guide and each Preliminary item must be looked at individually and priced on its own merits. There is often a great temptation, particularly when time is short, to look back at a previously priced set of Preliminaries which appears on the face of it similar to that under consideration and extract prices for use in the current job. However, whereas one set of Preliminaries does indeed often look pretty much like any other, careful examination will no doubt reveal extra restrictions and limitations imposed upon the contractor which, if overlooked, could lose him a great deal of money. Since each set of Preliminaries is different from any other, the best way of illustrating the pricing of this section of the bill is to consider a typical set of Preliminaries (Example 1) for a specific contract and this chapter is therefore devoted to that end.
