Quantity Surveying & Estimating · Nationwide · Virtual
A Quantity Surveyor for Groundworks & Civils.
From the PQQ that gets you on the list, to the final account that keeps what you earned. Priced by the hour, used job by job, no contract, no payroll, and nothing for your site supervisors to learn.
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
Groundworkers Lose It on Paper, Not on Site.
The dig goes in, the drainage goes in, the roads go in. The margin disappears somewhere between the tender and the final account, quietly, and usually after everyone has moved on to the next job.
Tenders priced at nine at night
Priced after a full day on site, from a drawing pack that is missing half the information, with the assumptions never written down. Win it on those numbers and you are stuck with them for the length of the contract.
The remeasure nobody does
Groundworks is remeasurable work. The bill said one thing, the ground said another, and unless somebody measures what was actually built, you are paid for the drawing rather than the dig.
Variations built on a handshake
Instructed on site by a contractor's engineer, built the same week, never confirmed in writing and never priced. It gets built, you pay for it, and it never reaches an application.
Accounts settled against professionals
The job finishes, everyone wants it closed, and you take what is offered, because the main contractor has a surveyor with records and you have a folder of tickets in the van.
None of that is a site problem. It is a paperwork problem, and paperwork is the one job in a groundworks business that nobody has time for, nobody enjoys, and everybody assumes somebody else is doing. It is also where your margin lives.
Stage One · Pre-Qualification & Tendering
Getting on the List, and Winning the Work.
Whether the enquiry arrives as a full bill of quantities or as a folder of drawings and a specification, it comes back priced, complete and submitted on time.
PQQs
Pre-qualification questionnaires
The forms that decide whether you are allowed to price the work at all. Completed properly and consistently: experience, capability, references, systems and the commercial detail, so the same information is not rewritten from scratch for every framework and every client.
From a Bill
Tender submissions priced from a BQ
Every item priced, nothing left blank, rates built from your own labour, plant and material costs rather than guessed at. Returned in the format the client asked for, with a written schedule of the assumptions and exclusions your price is based on.
From Drawings
Tender submissions from drawings and specification
Where there is no bill, we produce one. Quantities measured from the drawings, the specification read properly, and the whole thing priced, so you are bidding on measured work instead of a feel for what it looks like.
Design & Build
Specification input on design and build
On design and build enquiries, the specification is where the risk is hidden. We read what you are being asked to take on, flag what is uncosted or unreasonable, and help set out what your price does and does not cover.
The tenders you do not win still cost you. Every enquiry priced at night is a night. Priced by us, the ones you lose cost you a few hours instead of a weekend, and the ones you win are priced on numbers you can actually build to.
Stage Two · The Rest of the Submission
The Documents That Go In With the Price.
Most civils tenders are won or lost on what sits alongside the number. A price on its own looks like a guess; a price with a programme, a method and a cashflow behind it looks like a contractor who has done this before.
Programmes
A construction programme for the works: sequence, durations and the order the site is actually going to be built in. Submitted with the tender, and useful afterwards as the thing you measure delay against when the client changes their mind.
Method statements
Written method statements setting out how the work will be carried out, in a form clients and principal contractors accept. Prepared to suit the specific job rather than pulled off a shelf and renamed.
Cost plans
The build cost set out by element so both you and the client can see where the money sits, what is included in each section, and what any change to the scheme is going to do to the total.
Cashflow forecasts
A month-by-month forecast of value and spend across the programme. Clients and funders increasingly ask for one at tender stage, and it tells you which months of the job you will be funding out of your own pocket.
Submissions get scored, not just opened. On frameworks and public work, quality and programme carry marks of their own. A complete, professional submission moves you up the list before anybody looks at the bottom line.
Stage Three · Buying the Job
Buy the Job as Carefully as You Sold It.
Once it is won, the margin depends on what you pay for it. Written scopes and measured quantities mean your own supply chain prices the same job you priced.
Tender documents for specialist subcontractors
Scopes and measured quantities issued to steelfixers, tarmac firms, street lighting contractors, kerbing gangs and every other specialist you buy in. They all price the same work to the same scope, so you are comparing prices rather than comparing guesses, and the one who wins it cannot claim it was not included.
Internal prices for labour-only gangs
Priced rates for your own labour-only subcontractors: what the rate covers, what is measured and how, and what is excluded. Productivity holds because the gang knows exactly what it is being paid for before it starts, and the argument is had once, in writing, rather than every Friday.
Material schedules
Materials measured from the drawings: pipes, fittings, bedding, stone, concrete, kerbs, ironwork and the rest, in the units your suppliers quote in. Use it to buy the job properly at the start rather than ordering by phone as the site runs out.
Plant schedules
Plant set against the programme instead of ordered when somebody needs it. What is on hire, from when, for how long and at what rate, so standing plant with nothing to dig stops being a cost that nobody notices until the invoice arrives.
Measured once, used everywhere. The quantities behind your tender are the same quantities behind the subcontract packages, the material schedules and the valuations. Nothing gets measured twice and nothing drifts between one document and the next.
The Specialism · Remeasurement
The Remeasure Nobody Gets Round To.
Civils and groundworks are remeasurable by nature. Almost nothing is built exactly as billed, and the difference between the bill and the ground is money that belongs to somebody.
Where it disappears
- ▸Excavation deeper than the drawing showed, more muck away than the bill allowed, more stone imported because the formation would not take the design.
- ▸Drainage runs longer, deeper or in worse ground than the bill assumed, with the extra depth bands never re-rated.
- ▸Quantities that have changed so much, or conditions that have changed so far, that the original rate arguably no longer applies at all, and nobody has asked for a new one.
- ▸Records kept in a van and a phone. The work was done; six months later there is no evidence it was done to that quantity.
What we do about it
- ▸Remeasure the works item by item from the as-built information and your site records, against the contract rates and the method of measurement that applies.
- ▸Identify every item where the built quantity exceeds the billed quantity, and every item where a new rate is arguable rather than assumed away.
- ▸Set the difference out in a form the other side's surveyor has to answer line by line, instead of a total they can knock down in one go.
- ▸Tell your supervisors what to record now: depths, dimensions, dates, photographs, so that next year's account is evidenced rather than remembered.
Remeasure late and it is an argument. Remeasure monthly and it is an application. Carried out as the job runs, the same work claims the money in the month you spent it, instead of chasing it at the end, against a surveyor who has had all year to prepare.
Stage Four · Running the Job
Running the Job Without Losing the Paperwork.
Monthly documents that claim what you are owed, price what you were told to build, and leave a record your supervisors can keep on top of.
Interim valuations
Monthly applications that claim everything you are actually owed: measured work, remeasure, variations, materials on site and retention, in the format the contract demands and inside the dates it sets. Money you have already spent on labour, plant and stone belongs in this month's application, not next year's account.
Pricing variations
Extra work instructed on site, valued and set out in writing while the goodwill is still there and the people who instructed it are still on the job. Priced against contract rates where they apply and on a fair basis where they do not.
Timesheets and labour records
Allocation of labour, plant and hours against the works, kept in a form that supports a daywork claim or a delay claim later. It is the cheapest insurance on the site and the first thing missing when an account is disputed.
Quality logs for site supervisors
Simple records your supervisors can complete on the job: what was built, where, when, to what depth and to whose instruction. Written for people with a shovel behind them, 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 Five · Settlement & Getting Paid
Getting Paid, and Keeping What You Earned.
The end of a contract is negotiated, not calculated. It usually goes badly for whichever side turned up with delivery tickets instead of a valued position.
Final accounts
The whole job closed on a measured position: works remeasured, variations valued, dayworks supported, retention accounted for and contra charges answered. Negotiated by somebody who settles them for a living and knows what a normal outcome looks like.
Claims for loss and expense
Delay, disruption, standing plant and prolonged preliminaries set out in a form the other side is obliged to respond to properly, supported by the records rather than by how the job felt at the time.
Payment and pay less notices
The notices and the statutory deadlines that decide who wins the argument regardless of the merits. Served correctly and on time, and checked when one lands on you, because a defective notice is often the whole case.
Disputes and getting paid
Where an account has stalled, we set out the position, answer the contractor's surveyor in their own terms and press it to a settlement, including adjudication support where it goes that far.
This is where the leakage is. Everything left open across the whole contract gets decided in these few conversations, 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, programmes, cost plans, method statements, cashflows, subcontract packages, material and plant schedules, remeasures, valuations, variations, timesheets, quality logs, claims, final accounts, notices and 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 pre-qualification questionnaire
Typically 4 to 8 hours
£140 to £280
Completed once properly, then reused across the next framework and the next client instead of rewritten from scratch.
A tender from drawings and spec
Typically 15 to 30 hours
£525 to £1,050
Measured, priced and submitted with the assumptions written down, on a contract usually worth six or seven figures.
Monthly valuation and remeasure
Typically 4 to 8 hours a month
£140 to £280
Claims the money you have already spent on labour, plant and stone in the month you spent it, rather than at the end.
A final account with claims
Typically 15 to 25 hours
£525 to £875
The close of the contract argued and evidenced against a surveyor whose full-time job is settling them cheaply.
Indicative hours, not quotes. Every contract 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 job
The enquiry, the bill, the drawing pack, 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 and no meeting to sit through.
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 ready to submit, a valuation ready to go in, a remeasure set out line by line, or a final account position argued and evidenced. Use us again next job, or do not, there is nothing to cancel.
Virtual, so nationwide. Bills, drawings and accounts travel by email. We work with civils and groundworks firms across England and Wales without a penny of travel on the bill.
Start with one job. Most clients test us on a single tender or one stalled account 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 spreadsheet, a schedule, a programme 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 groundworks and civils firms start with a tender or a stalled account and work outwards from there.
Winning the Work
- ▸Pre-qualification questionnaires
- ▸Tender submissions from a bill of quantities
- ▸Tender submissions from drawings and specification
- ▸Specification input on design and build
- ▸Cost plans
- ▸Programmes
- ▸Method statements
- ▸Cashflow forecasts for clients
Buying the Job
- ▸Tender documents for specialist subcontractors
- ▸Packages for steelfixers
- ▸Packages for tarmac and surfacing firms
- ▸Packages for street lighting contractors
- ▸Internal prices for labour-only gangs
- ▸Material schedules
- ▸Plant schedules
Running the Job
- ▸Remeasures
- ▸Interim valuations and applications
- ▸Pricing of variations
- ▸Timesheets and labour allocation
- ▸Quality logs for site supervisors
- ▸Records for daywork and delay
- ▸Cost reporting against the tender
Getting Paid
- ▸Final accounts
- ▸Claims for loss and expense
- ▸Payment notices and pay less notices
- ▸Checking notices served on you
- ▸Payment disputes
- ▸Adjudication support
- ▸Assistance recovering stalled accounts
One job or one document. There is no minimum engagement and nothing to sign. If all you need is a PQQ finished by Friday, that is a perfectly good place to start.
Put a Quantity Surveyor on Your Next Contract Without Putting One on Your Payroll.
Send us the tender you are unsure about, the remeasure nobody has done, 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.