ABSTRACT
PURPOSE AND CONTENT OF THE BOOK For many years the Editors have compiled a price book for use in the building industry with, more recently, companion volumes for use in connection with engineering services contracts and landscaping work. All of these price books take their reliability from the established practice within these sectors of the construction industry of pricing work by the application of unit rates to quantities measured from the designer's drawings. This practice is valid because most building work can be carried out under similar circumstances regardless of site location; a comparatively low proportion of contract value is subject to the risks that attend upon work below ground level; and once the building envelope is complete most trades can proceed without serious disruption from the weather. This is not, however, the general method of pricing Civil Engineering work: the volume of work below ground, increased exposure to weather and the tremendous variety of projects, in terms of type, complexity and scale, makes the straightforward use of unit rates less reliable. So, whilst even in building work similar or identical measured items attract a fairly broad range of prices, the range is much greater in Civil Engineering Bills. This uncertainty is compounded by the lower number of bill items generated under Civil Engineering Methods of Measurement, so that the precise nature of the work is less apparent from the bill descriptions and the statistical effect of 'swings and roundabouts' has less scope to average out extremes of pricing. To prepare a price for a Civil Engineering project, then, it is necessary to have regard to the method to be adopted in executing the work, draw up a detailed programme and then cost out the resources necessary to prosecute the chosen method. Because the first part of this process is the province of the Contractor's planner, there has been a tendency to postpone detailed estimating until the tendering stage itself, with the employer relying up to that point upon an estimate prepared on a 'broad brush’ basis. The result has been a growing pressure on the part of project sponsors for an improvement in budgetary advice, so that a decision to commit expenditure to a particular project is taken on firmer grounds. The absence of a detailed pricing method during the pre-contract phase also inhibits the accurate costing of alternative designs and regular cost checking to ensure that the design is being developed within the employer's budget. This book therefore seeks to draw together the information appropriate to two methods of pricing: the cost of resources for use where an operational plan has been outlined, and unit rates for use where quantities can be taken from available drawings. To take some note of the range of unit rates that might apply to an item, the rates themselves are in some cases related to working method - for example by identifying the different types of plant that would suit varying circumstances. Nonetheless, it would be folly to propose that all types of Civil Engineering work could be covered by a price book such as this. The Editors have therefore had in mind the type and scale of work commissioned by a local authority, a public corporation or a large private company. This does embrace the great majority of work undertaken by the industry each year. Although almost all projects will have individual features that require careful attention in pricing, there will be some projects that are so specialist that they will not conform to standard pricing information at all. But for most projects, within the range of work covered, this book should provide a firm foundation of cost information upon which a job-specific estimate can be built. The contents of the book are therefore set out in a form that permits the user to follow the estimating process through in a structured way, as follows: Part 1: General The balance of this section describes in narrative form the work stages normally followed in a Contractor’s office from receipt of the tender documents through to the submission of the tender. Part 2: Preliminaries and General Items Containing a checklist of items to be priced with Preliminaries and General Items (or 'Method Related Charges’) and a worked example containing specific cost information.
