Quantity Surveying & Estimating · Nationwide · Virtual
A Quantity Surveyor for Commercial Developers.
From the appraisal that decides whether a site is worth buying, to the final account that protects the return you underwrote. Cost certainty at every stage, commissioned by the job, without a consultant on a monthly retainer.
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 Return Goes
Developers Lose It on Paper, Not on Site.
Schemes are rarely lost in construction. They are lost on the appraisal that was built to justify a land price, the cost plan that was never really a cost plan, and the design that was fixed before anybody costed it.
An appraisal built to justify the price
Every optimistic assumption in a land appraisal becomes a real loss the moment the site is yours, and by then there is nobody left to negotiate with. The appraisal that tells you to walk away is worth more than the one that gets the deal done.
A rate per square foot, called a cost plan
A benchmark rate applied to a gross area, with no elements, no quantities and no stated assumptions behind it. It looks like a cost plan to a lender right up until the tenders come in twenty per cent above it.
Design fixed before it was costed
Structure, envelope and services designed to work and to gain approval, with nobody asking what each decision costs until the drawings are frozen. After that, every saving is a variation with a cost of its own.
Accounts settled against nobody
The contractor employs a surveyor whose full-time occupation is maximising the account. If nobody is doing the same job on your side of the table, the outcome is decided long before anybody signs it off.
None of that is a construction problem. It is a commercial one, and it is decided in the months before anybody breaks ground, usually by a director doing the sums at nine at night between everything else.
Stage One · Appraisal, Viability & Funding
The Numbers You Buy and Borrow Against.
Independent appraisals built from measured quantities and current market rates, in the form lenders, investors and joint venture partners expect to receive them.
Feasibility & Viability
Informed decisions from the outset
A full build cost and residual land value for the scheme, prepared independently of you and of the vendor. That independence is the point: a seller can dismiss your own figures as a negotiating position, but a third-party appraisal showing what the site genuinely carries is far harder to argue with, and it gives you a defensible reason to move the price, or to walk.
Funding Submissions
Cost information that survives scrutiny
The appraisal set out the way lenders and their monitoring surveyors expect it: build cost by element, professional fees, finance, contingency, sales or letting values and profit, with every assumption stated. Fewer questions at credit committee, and a faster, cleaner route to drawdown.
Cashflow & Drawdown
For banks, investors and JV partners
A month-by-month forecast of spend and receipts across the programme: what goes out, when, and what comes back as units complete or leases start. It is what a funder wants before it commits, and what tells you the month the scheme runs tight while there is still time to do something about it.
Why independence matters. A vendor, a lender and an investor all discount a number produced by the person who benefits from it. Ours carries a name and a professional position behind it, which is exactly why it holds up in the room.
The Specialism · Accurate Costing
A Rate per Square Foot Is Not a Cost Plan.
A benchmark tells you roughly what a building like this cost somebody else, on a different site, at a different time. A cost plan tells you what this one will cost you, and why.
Why benchmark numbers come apart
- ▸A rate per square foot carries no information about this site: the ground, the access, the constraints, the abnormals or the phasing.
- ▸It cannot be interrogated. When a tender comes in above it, nobody can say which element moved or by how much, so the whole number is simply wrong.
- ▸It gives the design team no cost brief, so decisions get made for months without anybody knowing what they cost until it is too late to change them.
- ▸And it gives a lender nothing to test, which is precisely why monitoring surveyors take it apart.
What we produce instead
- ▸An order of cost estimate at the outset, developed into an elemental cost plan as the design develops, and into a pre-tender estimate before the enquiry goes out.
- ▸Cost set out by element: substructure, frame, envelope, services, fit-out, external works, preliminaries, so you can see where the money is and argue with any part of it.
- ▸Every assumption, exclusion and inclusion stated, with abnormals identified and priced separately rather than smoothed into a rate.
- ▸Updated at each design stage, so the scheme is measured against the budget continuously rather than once, at tender, when it is already too late.
The cost plan is a control document, not a report. Its job is to hold the design to the budget while the design can still be changed. A number produced once, at the end, is a post-mortem.
The Specialism · Value & Risk
Value Engineering and the Risk Allowance.
Two different jobs that get confused with each other. One takes cost out without taking value out. The other decides how much money you are holding against the things nobody can price yet.
Value engineering, done early
Each element priced as designed, then re-priced against alternatives that meet the same performance and the same approval. Options go back to the design team with the cost difference attached, so decisions are made on numbers rather than preferences, and while changing them is still free.
Not the same as cutting
Cutting takes specification out and hands the saving straight to the tenant or purchaser to notice. Value engineering changes how something is achieved, not what is achieved. Structure, substructure, envelope build-ups and services strategy are where the real money usually is.
A risk allowance, not a round number
Contingency set against an actual register of what could go wrong, what it would cost and how likely it is, rather than a flat percentage that is simultaneously too much for the safe items and nowhere near enough for the dangerous ones.
Drawn down deliberately
Risk money released against the risks it was held for, and reported monthly. You should know at any point how much of the allowance has gone, what it went on, and what is still exposed, before the last item arrives and finds the pot empty.
Timing decides the value. Reviewed before the design is frozen, a saving is clean and it belongs to you. Reviewed after the contractor is appointed, the same idea becomes a variation with a cost, a claim and a programme argument attached to it.
Stage Two · Tender & Procurement
Buying the Job: Route, Tender, Analysis.
How a scheme is procured decides who carries which risk and what it costs you to transfer it. That decision is worth more than the tender list, and it is usually made without anyone pricing it.
Procurement route advice
Traditional, design and build, two-stage with a pre-construction agreement, or management routes: each of them prices risk differently. We set out what each would mean for your cost certainty, your programme and your control of the design, before you commit to one.
Tender documentation
A properly measured and written enquiry so that every tenderer prices the same scope, with inclusions, exclusions, attendances and assumptions stated. It is the only way to receive prices you can compare line by line rather than totals you have to take on trust.
Tender analysis and reporting
Returns checked arithmetically and commercially, qualifications and exclusions drawn out, mid-tender queries run, and a written report setting out where each bidder differs and what the differences actually mean. The cheapest number and the best value are frequently not the same tender.
Contract documentation support
The right form for the route, with the amendments, schedules and priced documents assembled correctly, so the contract you sign reflects the price you accepted and the risk you thought you had transferred.
The lowest tender is not always the cheapest building. The one that excluded the most usually looks best on the day it is opened and worst on the day it is settled. Analysis is what tells you which one you are looking at.
Stage Three · Cost Control
Cost Control While There Is Time to Act.
Monthly reporting that tells you where the scheme is against the budget, what has moved, what is coming, and what you can still do about it.
Monthly cost reports
The scheme measured against the cost plan every month: committed, forecast and remaining, with movements explained and the risk allowance tracked. Written to be read by a board or a funder, not decoded by one.
Valuations and certification
Contractor applications assessed against what has actually been built and what the contract covers, certified at the right figure, with the notices served inside the contractual deadlines rather than a week after them.
Change control
Variations valued and agreed as they are instructed, with the cost and programme effect known before the change is made rather than discovered in the account. Uncontrolled change is how a scheme drifts a long way without anybody noticing.
Claims, delay and loss and expense
Extension of time and loss and expense submissions assessed properly and answered on the evidence, rather than conceded because nobody on your side had time to test them.
Reporting that arrives too late is just history. The value of a cost report is entirely in how much of the scheme is still ahead of you when you read it. Monthly, in a form you can act on, is the whole point.
Stage Four · Settlement
Final Accounts. Clear Reporting, No Surprises.
The end of a contract is negotiated, not calculated, and it is negotiated against a contractor's surveyor who settles them for a living. So should yours.
Final account negotiation
The account closed on a measured position: works completed, variations valued, provisional sums adjusted, contra charges applied and retention accounted for. Negotiated by somebody who knows what a normal outcome looks like and what is simply being tried on.
Claims assessed, not conceded
Delay and disruption claims tested against the records, the programme and the contract before anything is agreed, and answered in a form that obliges the other side to substantiate what they are asking for.
Contra charges and set-off
Defects, damage, attendances and works completed by others, evidenced and quantified as they arose and applied to the account correctly, rather than remembered at the end and abandoned under pressure.
Reporting you can hand over
A clear, evidenced closing position for your board, your funder or your purchaser, with the whole history of the account behind it. No surprises at the end because there were none along the way.
This is where the leakage is. Everything left open across a two-year scheme gets decided in a handful of conversations at the end. On the other side of the table sits somebody whose full-time occupation is settling them. Ours is too.
What It Costs · By the Job or by the Hour
Commissioned Scheme by Scheme.
Take the whole service or a single document. Fixed fees where the work is well defined, hourly where it is not, and no retainer, no minimum spend and nothing to cancel.
Per Hour, From
Appraisals and viability studies, order of cost estimates, elemental cost plans, pre-tender estimates, value engineering reviews, risk registers, cashflow and drawdown forecasts, procurement advice, tender documentation and analysis, monthly cost reports, valuations and certification, change control, claims assessment and final accounts. Fixed fees agreed before anything starts wherever the scope allows.
An appraisal or viability study
Typically 20 to 40 hours
£700 to £1,400
The number you take into a land negotiation, to a credit committee, or to a decision about whether to bid at all.
A formal elemental cost plan
Typically 20 to 30 hours
£700 to £1,050
Cost set out by element with the assumptions stated, updated as the design develops rather than produced once.
Tender documents and analysis
Typically 20 to 60 hours
£700 to £2,100
A measured enquiry so every bidder prices the same scope, and a written report on what the differences actually mean.
Monthly cost management
Typically 30 plus hours a month
£1,050 to £1,420
Cost report, valuation, certification and change control, on a scheme where a single uncontrolled variation costs more.
Indicative hours, not quotes. Every scheme is different. We scope the work before anything starts and you approve it, so there is no open-ended bill at the end of it.
How It Works · Getting Started
Send the Scheme. Agree the Fee. Get It Back.
No onboarding, no software and no consultant appointment to negotiate. The whole thing runs over email and the phone, scheme by scheme.
Send us the scheme
The site, the accommodation schedule, the drawings, the design team's information, or the tender return you are unsure about, or the account that has stalled. A phone call and an email is enough to start.
We scope it and quote it
A fixed fee where the work is well defined, or an estimate of hours where it is not. You approve it before anything starts, and you are committed to nothing beyond that piece of work.
You get the work back
An appraisal you can negotiate with, a cost plan you can hold the design to, a tender report you can decide on, or a closing position you can hand to your board. Use us again next scheme, or do not.
Alongside your existing team. We work with your architect, engineers and project manager, or alongside a consultant you already use. We are not trying to replace anybody, most often we are the cost discipline nobody currently has.
Start with one scheme. Most clients test us on a single appraisal, or on one tender analysis, before they use us for anything else. That is exactly how it is meant to work.
Virtual, so nationwide. Drawings, cost plans and accounts travel by email. We work with developers across England and Wales without a penny of travel on the bill, and every deliverable arrives as a document your board and your funder can read.
The Full Schedule · Everything We Produce
The Complete Schedule of Documents.
Take any one of them on its own. Most developers start with a single appraisal or one tender analysis and work outwards from there.
Appraisal & Funding
- ▸Development appraisals
- ▸Viability studies
- ▸Residual land value appraisals
- ▸Order of cost estimates
- ▸Cost information for funding submissions
- ▸Cashflow and drawdown forecasts
- ▸Support through monitoring surveyor review
Design & Cost Planning
- ▸Elemental cost plans
- ▸Cost plans updated by design stage
- ▸Pre-tender estimates
- ▸Value engineering reviews
- ▸Option appraisals with cost attached
- ▸Risk registers and risk allowances
- ▸Abnormals identified and priced
Procurement
- ▸Procurement route advice
- ▸Tender documentation
- ▸Schedules of quantities
- ▸Mid-tender query management
- ▸Tender analysis and reports
- ▸Contract documentation support
- ▸Subcontract and package procurement
Delivery & Settlement
- ▸Monthly cost reports
- ▸Valuations and certification
- ▸Payment and pay less notices
- ▸Change control and variation valuation
- ▸Extension of time and loss and expense
- ▸Final accounts
- ▸Contra charges and closing reports
One scheme or one document. There is no minimum engagement and nothing to sign. If all you need is a second opinion on a tender return before you accept it, that is a perfectly good place to start.
Put a Quantity Surveyor on Your Next Scheme Without Putting One on Your Payroll.
Send us the site you are least sure about, the cost plan nobody has tested, the tender return that does not look right, or the account that has stalled. We will tell you what is involved and what it costs before you commit to anything.