Quantity Surveying & Estimating · Nationwide · Virtual
A Quantity Surveyor for Brickwork Contractors.
Every house type priced, every plot scheduled, every lift block-booked, so the gangs know what they are on before they start and nobody spends Friday afternoon measuring a wall.
From £35 / Hour
Every service on the list, billed by the hour from a single hour. No retainer, no minimum spend.
No Commitment
Use us for one tender or every job. Nothing to sign, nothing to cancel, nobody on your payroll.
Nationwide
We work virtually. Drawings, schedules and accounts travel by email, so no job is out of reach.
The Problem · Where the Money Goes
Bricklayers Lose It on Paper, Not on the Wall.
The gangs lay the bricks and the houses go up. The margin disappears in the tender that was guessed at, the rates nobody wrote down, and the Friday afternoon argument that happens every week of the job.
Priced off a rate per thousand
A price built from a feel for what the house looks like rather than measured quantities by type. Get it wrong on plot one and you get it wrong on every plot, on a site that runs for two years.
Foundations priced as if fixed
Below-ground brickwork depends on what the dig actually turns out to be. Priced as a fixed sum before anybody has opened the ground, every extra course under the DPC comes out of your margin.
Gangs jacking mid-house
The easy money is in the early lifts. Pay it out evenly and a gang can take the straightforward courses and leave the gables, verges and cut work to somebody else, at a premium, and with a matching problem on top.
The Friday measure
Two people walking the site with a tape, disagreeing about what went up this week, in front of a gang who want paying. Every week. It costs a day, it costs goodwill, and it settles nothing that a written rate would not have settled first.
None of that is a trowel problem. It is a paperwork problem, and paperwork is the one job in a bricklaying business that nobody has time for, nobody enjoys, and everybody assumes somebody else is doing. It is also where your margin lives.
Stage One · The Tender Submission
Every House Type Priced. Every Plot Scheduled.
A brickwork tender that shows the client exactly what they are buying, plot by plot, and shows you exactly what you have committed to before you sign it.
Fixed
Fixed prices for every house type
Each house type measured properly from the elevations and floor plans: facings, blockwork, cavity, ties, insulation, lintels, cills, quoins, arches, verges and special cut work, priced as a fixed sum. The client gets a number they can rely on for every plot of that type, and you get a price you know you can build to because it came from measured quantities rather than a rate per thousand.
Provisional
Provisional quantities for all foundations
Below-DPC work is priced at fixed rates against provisional quantities, because nobody knows the dig until the ground is open. Deeper foundations are then paid at the rate you tendered rather than absorbed. It is the honest way to price it, clients understand it, and it removes the single biggest source of loss on a brickwork package.
Scheduled
A full schedule for every plot on site
The whole site set out plot by plot with the house type, the value and the split between substructure and superstructure. The client can see their commitment across the development, your valuations are then a matter of adding up finished plots, and the final account is largely written before the job starts.
Fixed where it can be fixed, provisional where it cannot. That single distinction is what separates a brickwork tender that holds its margin from one that looked competitive in the office and lost money in the ground.
Stage Two · The Rest of the Submission
The Documents That Go In With the Price.
Housebuilders and main contractors are choosing between several bricklayers who are all within a few percent of each other. What arrives alongside the price is usually what decides it.
PQQs
Pre-qualification questionnaires completed properly and consistently: experience, capability, references, insurances, health and safety and the commercial detail. Done once and reused, instead of rewritten from scratch for every housebuilder and every framework.
Programmes
A build programme showing the plot sequence, the gang resource and the durations: how many gangs, on which plots, in what order. It tells the client you have thought about how their site gets built, not just what a brick costs.
Method statements
Written method statements covering scaffold interface, materials handling, mortar, protection, working at height and adverse weather. Prepared for the specific site rather than pulled off a shelf and renamed.
Written scope and exclusions
A schedule of exactly what your price includes and what it does not: scaffold, muck away, forklift, protection, attendances, weather standing. Agreed at tender stage, when it is a conversation, rather than at final account, when it is a dispute.
Submissions get compared, not just opened. A complete, professional submission from a bricklaying firm is rare enough that it moves you up the list before anybody has looked closely at the bottom line.
The Specialism · Internal Orders
Block Prices, Backloaded to Keep Gangs on Site.
How you split the money across a house decides whether it gets finished by the gang that started it. Most brickwork contractors have never set that split deliberately.
What happens with an even split
- ▸The early lifts are the quick money: long straight runs, few openings, easy gauge. The later lifts are gables, verges, cut work, chimney and detail.
- ▸Paid evenly, a gang can earn well up to first lift and move to a site where the next easy money is, leaving a half-built house behind them.
- ▸What follows costs you twice: a replacement gang prices an inherited house at a premium, and nobody wants to take responsibility for what is already up.
- ▸Then the remedial work: mortar batches that no longer match, banding across the elevation, cut work made good, scaffold re-hired and a plot that has gone backwards on the programme.
How we write the order instead
- ▸Each house type broken into blocks and lifts: substructure, ground to first, first to second, gables and verges, finishing and making good.
- ▸A price against every block, deliberately backloaded so that a meaningful share of the value sits in the lifts that finish the house.
- ▸The gang can see the whole house and the whole earning on day one, so the incentive runs the right way: the money is in completing the plot, not in starting the next one.
- ▸Issued as a written internal order the gang agrees before it starts, with what each price covers and what it does not. The argument is had once, in an office, rather than every Friday on the deck.
A gang that jacks at first lift is the most expensive thing on your site. Backloading the order costs you nothing, it is the same money in a different order. It just makes finishing the house the most profitable thing the gang can do.
The Specialism · Booking and Measure
Tick Sheets. No Weekly Measure. No Friday Row.
If every block is priced and agreed before the gang starts, booking the week's work stops being a measure and becomes a tick. That is the whole idea.
Everything priced up front
Every block on every plot carries an agreed price from the day the order is issued. Nothing is left to be valued later, which means nothing is left to be argued about later either.
Booked by ticking, not measuring
A simple sheet per plot listing the blocks. The foreman ticks what is complete. That is the booking done: no tape, no scaffold walk, no two people disagreeing about how many courses went on this week.
Block booked, so nobody guesses
Part-finished blocks are not paid on a feel. The block is either complete and ticked or it is not, which removes the running argument about what a wall is worth halfway up.
Transparent for both sides
The client sees the same schedule you do and the gang sees the same sheet they signed up to. Everybody is working from one document, which is the only reason any of this stays civil.
Set it up once, at the start. The whole system is built when the order is written, before a brick is laid. After that it runs itself, and it gives you back the Friday afternoon you have been spending on it for years.
Stage Three · Running the Job
Running the Job Without Losing the Paperwork.
Monthly and weekly documents that claim what you are owed from the client, pay the gangs correctly, and leave a record somebody can use when the job is questioned a year later.
Interim valuations for the client
Monthly applications that claim everything you are actually owed: completed plots, work in progress, substructure remeasure, variations and materials, in the format the contract demands and inside the dates it sets.
Remeasures from the foreman's figures
Your foreman takes basic site measures: depths, courses below DPC, openings, extras. We turn them into a professional remeasure with the quantities set out against the tendered rates. He does not need to be a surveyor and you do not need to be on site.
Daywork sheets for delays
Standing time when the scaffold is not ready, the materials have not landed or another trade is in the way. Recorded at the time on a sheet the site manager signs, because a signed sheet in March is worth more than a good memory in November.
Quality logs for site supervisors
Simple records your supervisors can complete on the plot: gauge and perps, cavity clear, ties and insulation, cavity trays and DPC, movement joints, mortar mix and protection. Written for people with a job to do, not for a surveyor with a spare afternoon.
Built for site supervisors, not surveyors. Everything on this page comes back as a document your team can read, fill in and file. There is no system to log into, no licence to buy and nothing for anybody on site to be trained on.
Stage Four · Settlement & Getting Paid
Getting Paid, and Keeping What You Earned.
A brickwork package on a live housing site generates extras every week. Most of them are built, and a great many of them are never paid for.
Variations priced
Changes to house types, revised elevations, extra openings, feature brickwork, quoins and detail added after the drawings were priced. Valued against the tendered rates and agreed in writing while the people who instructed them are still on the site.
Claims for delay and loss and expense
Standing gangs, out-of-sequence working, plots released late and scaffold that was not ready. Set out from the daywork sheets and the programme in a form the other side is obliged to answer properly.
Payment disputes
Applications cut without explanation, notices served late or not at all, and the deadlines that decide who wins the argument regardless of the merits. Checked when one lands on you, and answered in the same terms.
Final accounts
The package closed on a measured position: plots completed, substructure remeasured, variations valued, dayworks supported and retention accounted for, negotiated by somebody who settles them for a living.
This is where the leakage is. Everything left open across a two-year site gets decided in a handful of conversations at the end, usually against someone whose full-time occupation is settling them. Ours is too.
What It Costs · One Rate, Every Service
£35 an Hour. From a Single Hour.
Every service in this document is available at the same rate. Where a piece of work is well defined, we will agree a fixed fee for it before anything starts.
Per Hour, From
PQQs, tenders, house type pricing, plot schedules, programmes, method statements, internal orders, tick sheets, valuations, remeasures, daywork sheets, quality logs, variations, claims, final accounts and payment disputes: all of it at the same rate, billed by the hour, from a single hour. No retainer, no minimum spend and nothing to cancel.
A full brickwork tender for a site
Typically 15 to 30 hours
£525 to £1,050
Every house type measured and priced, foundations set out as provisional quantities, and a schedule for every plot on the development.
Internal orders and tick sheets
Typically 8 to 15 hours
£280 to £525
Built once at the start of the site. It then runs for the length of the job and replaces the weekly measure entirely.
Monthly valuation and remeasure
Typically 3 to 6 hours a month
£105 to £210
Claims the money you have already paid out in gang wages in the month you paid it, rather than at the end of the site.
A final account with claims
Typically 12 to 20 hours
£420 to £700
The close of the package argued and evidenced against a surveyor whose full-time job is settling them cheaply.
Indicative hours, not quotes. Every site is different. We scope the hours before anything starts and you approve them, so there is no open-ended bill at the end of it.
How It Works · Getting Started
Send the Job. Agree the Hours. Get It Back.
No onboarding, no software to learn and nothing for your site supervisors to be trained on. The whole thing runs over email and the phone.
Send us the site
The enquiry, the house type drawings, the elevations, the PQQ that closes on Friday or the account that has stalled. A phone call and an email is enough to start, there is no form to fill in.
We scope the hours
We come back with what is involved and roughly how long it will take at £35 an hour, or a fixed fee where the work is well defined. You approve it before anything starts.
You get the work back
A priced tender with a plot schedule, internal orders and tick sheets ready to issue to the gangs, a valuation ready to go in, or a final account argued and evidenced. Use us again next site, or do not.
Virtual, so nationwide. Drawings, schedules and accounts travel by email. We work with brickwork contractors across England and Wales without a penny of travel on the bill.
Start with one site. Most clients test us on a single tender, or on the internal orders for one site, before they use us for anything else. That is exactly how it is meant to work.
No system to log into. Every deliverable arrives as a document: a schedule, a tick sheet, an order or a report. Your supervisors already know how to read one, which is the only training anybody needs.
The Full Schedule · Everything We Produce
The Complete Schedule of Documents.
Take any one of them on its own. Most brickwork contractors start with a tender or with the internal orders for one site and work outwards from there.
Winning the Work
- ▸Pre-qualification questionnaires
- ▸Tender submissions
- ▸Fixed prices by house type
- ▸Provisional quantities for foundations
- ▸Full plot-by-plot schedules
- ▸Programmes and gang resource
- ▸Method statements
- ▸Written scope and exclusions
Setting Up the Site
- ▸Internal orders for labour-only gangs
- ▸Block and lift price breakdowns
- ▸Backloaded payment splits
- ▸Tick sheets for weekly booking
- ▸Block booking schedules
- ▸Rates agreed in writing before start
- ▸Quality logs for site supervisors
Running the Job
- ▸Interim valuations for the client
- ▸Remeasures from foreman's site measures
- ▸Substructure remeasure
- ▸Daywork sheets for delays and standing
- ▸Pricing of variations
- ▸Cost reporting against the tender
- ▸Gang payment reconciliation
Getting Paid
- ▸Final accounts
- ▸Claims for delay
- ▸Claims for loss and expense
- ▸Payment disputes
- ▸Payment and pay less notices
- ▸Checking notices served on you
- ▸Assistance recovering stalled accounts
One site or one document. There is no minimum engagement and nothing to sign. If all you need is a set of internal orders for the site you started last week, that is a perfectly good place to start.
Put a Quantity Surveyor on Your Next Site Without Putting One on Your Payroll.
Send us the tender you are unsure about, the site where the gang rates have never been written down, or the account that has stalled. We will tell you what is involved and how many hours it will take before you commit to anything.