The essential, authoritative guide to providing accurate, systematic, and reliable estimating for construction projects—newly revised Pricing and bidding for construction work is at the heart of every construction business, and in the minds of construction consultants’ poor bids lead to poor performance and nobody wins. New Code of Estimating Practice examines the processes of estimating and pricing, providing best practice guidelines for those involved in procuring and pricing construction works, both in the public and private sectors. It embodies principles that are applicable to any project regardless of size or complexity. This authoritative guide has been completely rewritten to include much more contextual and educational material as well as the code of practice. It covers changes in estimating practice; the bidding process; the fundamentals in formulating a bid; the pre-qualification process; procurement options; contractual arrangements and legal issues; preliminaries; temporary works; cost estimating techniques; risk management; logistics; resource and production planning; computer-aided estimating; information and time planning; resource planning and pricing; preparation of an estimator’s report; bid assembly and adjudication; pre-production planning and processes; and site production. Established standard for the construction industry, providing the only code of practice on construction estimating Prepared under the auspices of the Chartered Institute of Building and endorsed by a range of other professional bodies Completely rewritten since the 7th edition, to include much more contextual and educational material, as well as the core code of practice New Code of Estimating Practice is an important book for construction contractors, specialist contractors, quantity surveyors/cost consultants, and for students of construction and quantity surveying.

Table of Contents:
Foreword xi Glossary xiii Code of estimating and tendering practice – principles and procedures xxv Section One Principles – the theory and background 1 1 Introduction 3 1.1 An imprecise science 3 1.2 Data, information, and knowledge in estimating 4 1.3 Experience, instinct, gut feel, intuition and bias 5 1.4 Optimism bias 6 2 The Fundamentals 7 2.1 Tender and bid 7 2.2 Pricing 7 2.3 Profitability 8 2.4 Types of tender 9 2.5 Tender award 10 2.6 The difference between procurement and tendering 10 2.7 Methods of procurement 11 3 Changes driving estimating practice 13 3.1 Digitisation 13 3.2 E-Tendering 14 3.3 Legislation and taxation 14 3.4 Bureaucracy 14 3.5 Competition and winning work 14 3.6 Specialisation 15 3.7 New technologies and off-site production 15 3.8 New methods of procurement 15 3.9 Best value 15 4 The bid process 17 4.1 Work breakdown structure 17 4.2 Underlying principles 18 5 Health and safety 25 5.1 Introduction 25 5.2 Estimating the cost of health and safety 25 6 The pre-qualification process 31 6.1 Introduction 31 6.2 Bidding for public sector projects 32 7 Procurement, selection, contractual arrangements and legal issues 37 7.1 Methods of procurement 37 7.2 Two-stage tendering 43 7.3 Framework agreements 44 7.4 Concession contracts 44 7.5 Engineer Procure Construct (EPC) 46 7.6 Prime contracting 46 7.7 Early contractor involvement (ECI) 47 7.8 Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) 47 7.9 Selection processes 47 7.10 Integrated design and construction 49 7.11 E-procurement 49 7.12 E-auctions 50 7.13 Abnormally low tenders 50 8 Preliminaries 51 8.1 Site establishment 51 8.2 Insurances, bonds and so on 58 8.3 Site records 61 8.4 Fees and charges 62 8.5 Compliance 63 8.6 Environmental management 65 8.7 Wastewater treatment system 68 8.8 Waste management 69 8.9 Waste disposal, sorting and storage 71 8.10 Setting out 74 8.11 Control and protection 75 8.12 Completion and post-completion requirements 76 8.13 Contingencies 77 8.14 Management and staff 78 9 Temporary Works 81 9.1 Introduction 81 9.2 Temporary works management 83 9.3 Temporary works co-ordinator (TWC) 83 9.4 Temporary works supervisor 84 9.5 Temporary works register 84 9.6 Temporary works design brief 84 9.7 Scaffolding 89 9.8 Falsework 92 9.9 Formwork 93 9.10 Earthworks 94 9.11 Temporary services 97 9.12 Façade retention 98 9.13 Structures – design and loading 99 9.14 Plant foundations 100 9.15 Protection on-site 100 9.16 Traffic management 101 9.17 Temporary access for vehicles and pedestrians 101 9.18 Barriers for pedestrians and vehicles 101 9.19 Haul roads 102 9.20 Works associated with any ordnance uncovered 102 9.21 Signage 102 9.22 Protection of adjacent properties 102 10 Cost-estimating techniques 103 10.1 Approximate quantities 108 10.2 Cost planning 110 11 Private finance initiative/public–private partnerships/build, operate and transfer, and whole-life costing 113 12 Risk management 115 12.1 Background 115 12.2 Risk analysis 118 12.3 Cost estimating accuracy 118 13 Logistics 121 13.1 Materials logistics plan 122 13.2 Materials management 124 13.3 Personnel management and health and safety 124 13.4 Plant, tools and equipment – maintenance and management 124 13.5 Transportation 124 13.6 Traffic management 127 14 Resource and production planning 129 14.1 Planning techniques 130 14.2 Resource planning 130 14.3 Time – its perception and impact on the estimating process 133 15 Computer-aided cost estimating 135 16 BIM and the estimating process 137 16.1 Overview 137 16.2 The challenges of using BIM in the estimating process 138 Section Two Processes – the practice 139 1 Consider and assess 141 1.1 Receive preliminary enquiry 142 1.2 Consider order backlog/new orders 143 1.3 Decision to tender (bid or no bid) 143 1.4 Project information, schedule and questionnaire 148 1.5 Consider client and consultant team and project delivery availability 149 1.6 Assessment criteria – lowest price/quality and so on 150 1.7 The likely competition 151 2 Information and time planning 153 2.1 Works specialty/works contractor enquiries 154 2.2 The bid team 157 2.3 Produce bid timetable/strategy 158 2.4 Examine documents – contract, design, bonds, warranties and insurance 160 2.5 Site visit – utilities, ground conditions, adjacent properties and so on 162 2.6 Method statement/logistics plan 164 3 Contract terms and conditions 171 3.1 Special employer requirements and modifications to standard clauses 173 4 Resource planning and pricing 175 4.1 Pricing the works 176 4.2 Establish unit rates – labour and plant 178 4.3 Establish unit rates – labour, materials and plant 180 4.4 Labour cost issues – a summary 185 4.5 Build-up unit rates 186 4.6 Gang sizes for activities 189 4.7 Allocation of costs 192 4.8 All-in rates for plant and equipment 194 4.9 Select materials and specialty contractors’ quotations 197 4.10 Specialty contractor quotations 199 4.11 Provisional sums – defined and undefined 200 4.12 Incorporating provisional sums in an estimate 200 4.13 Daywork 204 4.14 Pricing the preliminaries 205 4.15 Add allowances 206 5 Prepare estimator’s report 211 6 Examine and consider 215 6.1 Examine preliminaries 216 6.2 Requests for further information 216 6.3 Examine method and tender programme 216 6.4 Examine resource costs 217 6.5 Consider the competition for the project in the market 217 6.6 Consider cash flow and capital requirements for the project 217 7 Bid assembly and adjudication 219 7.1 Finalise the pricing 220 7.2 Bid adjudication/final review 221 7.3 Qualification of any special items of tender 222 8 Pre-production planning and processes 225 8.1 Develop a detailed method statement 226 8.2 Develop production planning schedule 226 8.3 Allocate resources 227 8.4 Obtain licences and so on from local authority and utilities organisation 227 8.5 Ordering of long lead-time materials, plant and equipment 228 8.6 Request for further information from consultants and specialty contractors 229 8.7 Pre-production schedule prior to work commencement 229 8.8 Check conditions of contract award 229 9 Site production 231 9.1 Pricing change and variation orders 232 9.2 Appointment of specialist contractors 232 9.3 Estimating and pricing contractual claims 232 9.4 Production of final account 233 9.5 Cost–value reconciliation 234 Bibliography and References 235 Index 241