Quantity Surveying & Estimating · Nationwide · Virtual
A Quantity Surveyor for Joinery Contractors.
Priced at a level that wins the job and still makes money on it. Qualified so you are not carrying somebody else's risk. Managed properly once you have got it. You give clients what they need. Leave the ugly maths to us.
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
Joiners Lose It on Paper, Not on the Tools.
The work goes in and the finish is right. The margin disappears in the price that was pitched at the wrong level, the risk nobody qualified out, and the job that was never managed commercially once it was won.
Priced at the wrong level
Too high and the enquiry goes quiet and you never find out why. Too low and you win it, work all year and finish with nothing to show. Both are the same mistake: a price built on a feel rather than on measured quantities and your own real costs.
Carrying risk you were not paid for
Attendances, access, sequencing, making good after other trades, protection, materials on a volatile price. Left unsaid at tender, all of it belongs to you by default, and none of it was in the rate.
One-offs priced on a Sunday night
Extensions and complex builds priced in an hour because the enquiry came in on Friday. The ones you win on those numbers are the ones that keep you awake later.
Won it, then never managed it
The job is priced properly, then run on memory. Variations built and not claimed, remeasures never done, applications guessed at and a final account settled for whatever is offered.
None of that is a workmanship problem. It is a commercial one, and commercial work is the job in a joinery business that nobody has time for, nobody enjoys, and everybody assumes somebody else is doing. It is also where your margin lives.
The Work · What We Price
Housing Sites, Extensions, Complex One-Offs.
We price joinery packages of every size and shape, from a single extension to a multi-phase housing development, and we know how joinery contracts are written, measured and paid.
Housing Sites
Priced by house type, scheduled by plot
First fix and second fix measured properly for every house type: joists, roof carpentry, stud work, linings, staircases, windows and doors, skirting, architrave, ironmongery and fitted joinery, then set out as a rate per plot and a schedule across the whole development. The client sees exactly what they are buying on every plot, and you have a price you can build to for the length of the site.
Extensions & Domestic
Priced quickly, priced properly
Extension and refurbishment enquiries turned round fast, because the reason they get priced badly is that they always arrive at the wrong moment. Measured from whatever information exists, priced from your real costs, and returned with the assumptions written down so the client knows what they are agreeing to.
Complex & One-Off Builds
Where the risk is in the detail
Bespoke and complex work where the drawings are open to interpretation and the specification carries more than it looks like it does. These are the jobs where the difference between a good year and a bad one is decided at tender, so this is where a measured price earns its fee several times over.
We know joinery contracts. How the work is measured, where the grey areas sit, what is normally included and what is normally somebody else's, which is what stops a price being either generous or naive in the places that matter.
The Specialism · Finding the Level
Too High, No Job. Too Low, No Margin.
There is a narrow band between the price that loses you the work and the price that loses you money on it. Finding that band deliberately, rather than by feel, is most of what estimating actually is.
How prices end up at the wrong level
- ▸A percentage added across everything for risk. Spread evenly, it makes you a few percent expensive on every single item and it loses tenders you should have won.
- ▸Rates carried forward from the last job, on a different specification, in a different year, with different materials prices behind them.
- ▸Nervousness about one difficult element priced into all of it, rather than into the element that is actually difficult.
- ▸Or the opposite: a keen number put in to keep the gangs busy, with nobody ever working out what it needed to be to make money.
How we set it instead
- ▸Built from measured quantities and your own real costs: gang outputs, materials, waste, plant, attendance and overhead, so you know what the floor is before anybody talks about the ceiling.
- ▸Risk money placed where the risk actually is. The straightforward elements price keenly and the difficult ones carry what they need to.
- ▸The price tested against what work of that kind is being won at, from having priced a great many of them.
- ▸You are told what the number is, what it assumes and where the margin sits, so the decision on how hungry to be stays yours, taken with the figures in front of you.
The aim is the sweet spot. Keen enough to win the work, strong enough to make money building it, and, just as importantly, an honest number on the ones you should walk away from before they cost you a year.
The Specialism · Qualifying the Price
Qualify the Price. Remove the Risk.
Most of what goes wrong on a joinery package was never priced, because it was never mentioned. A qualified tender is the cheapest risk management available to a subcontractor.
What the price is based on
Which drawings, which revisions, which specification, and what is assumed about anything the information does not cover. Written down at tender, so that when the drawings change, and they will, the change is visible and chargeable rather than absorbed.
What is included and what is not
Labour only or supply and fix, materials and ironmongery, waste and clearance, protection, scaffold, forklift and access, making good after other trades. Each one stated plainly, because every item left unsaid is yours by default.
Where the commercial risk sits
Materials on a volatile price, long lead-time items such as staircases and special ironmongery, and specification that is open to interpretation. Priced where it can be, flagged and time-limited where it cannot.
Access, sequence and attendance
What you have assumed about plot handover condition, working areas, power and lighting, drying out, and following on from other trades. Out-of-sequence working is the most common cause of a joinery job losing money, and the only defence is having said so first.
Qualification is not small print. It is the difference between a variation you get paid for and an argument you lose. Done properly it also makes your tender easier to accept, because the client can see exactly what they are buying.
After You Win It · Setting the Job Up
Won the Job. Now Set It Up Properly.
The tender is only half of it. What turns a good price into a good year is buying the job properly and having a simple system for booking work from the first week.
Material schedules
Everything measured from the drawings by house type or by area: joists, timber, sheet materials, linings, doors, staircases, ironmongery, skirting, architrave and fixings, in the units your suppliers quote in. Use it to buy the job properly at the start, to place call-offs against the programme, and to check what is delivered against what the plot actually needs.
Plant schedules
Plant and equipment set against the programme rather than hired when somebody needs it, and off hire when they do not. It is a small item on a joinery package and it is the one that quietly runs for three months longer than the work it was hired for.
Prices and tick sheets
Every element of the job priced and listed on a simple sheet before work starts. The supervisor ticks what is complete and that is the booking done: no measuring, no valuing part-finished work, no weekly argument about what a plot is worth. The same sheet pays your gangs and supports your application to the client.
Set it up once, at the start. The whole system is built in the first week of the job, before anybody is too busy to do it. After that it runs itself, and it is the reason the job you priced well is still the job you are being paid for in month nine.
Running the Job · Monthly Commercial Work
Running the Job Without Losing the Paperwork.
Monthly documents that claim what you are owed, value what you were told to build, and leave a record somebody can use when the job is questioned a year later.
Interim valuations
Monthly applications that claim everything you are actually owed: completed work, work in progress, materials, variations and retention, in the format the contract demands and inside the dates it sets. Money you have already paid out in wages belongs in this month's application, not in next year's account.
Variations valued
Changes to the specification, revised drawings, extra doors and openings, upgraded ironmongery and joinery added after the price was fixed. Valued against your tendered rates and agreed in writing while the people who instructed them are still on site.
Remeasures
Where the work is measured on completion rather than paid as a lump, remeasured properly against the rates you tendered, from your supervisor's basic site figures. He does not need to be a surveyor and you do not need to be on site.
Records for delay
Standing time, out-of-sequence working and plots released late, recorded at the time on sheets the site manager signs. A signed sheet in March is worth considerably more than a good memory in November.
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.
Settlement · Getting Paid
Getting Paid, and Keeping What You Earned.
The end of a job is negotiated, not calculated. It usually goes badly for whichever side turned up with a folder of delivery notes instead of a valued position.
Claims for delay
Time lost to plots released late, other trades in the way, materials that did not land and access that was not there. Set out from the records and the programme in a form the other side is obliged to answer properly, rather than raised as a complaint at the end.
Payment disputes
Applications cut without explanation, notices served late or not at all, and the statutory 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 job closed on a measured position: work completed, remeasures agreed, variations valued, delay costs supported and retention accounted for. Negotiated by somebody who settles them for a living and knows what a normal outcome looks like.
Assistance 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 support if it goes as far as adjudication.
This is where the leakage is. Everything left open across the whole job 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
Tenders and one-off prices, rate build-ups, qualifications and exclusions, material and plant schedules, prices and tick sheets, interim valuations, variations, remeasures, delay records, 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.
An extension or one-off price
Typically 4 to 8 hours
£140 to £280
Measured, priced and qualified, and back with you quickly, instead of squeezed into a Sunday evening after a full week on the tools.
A tender for a housing site
Typically 12 to 25 hours
£420 to £875
Every house type measured across first and second fix, priced by plot, with the assumptions and exclusions set out in writing.
Schedules and tick sheets
Typically 6 to 12 hours
£210 to £420
Built once at the start of the job. It then runs for the length of the contract and replaces the weekly measure entirely.
A final account with claims
Typically 12 to 20 hours
£420 to £700
The close of the job argued and evidenced against a surveyor whose full-time occupation is settling them cheaply.
Indicative hours, not quotes. Every job 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 enquiry
The drawings, the specification, the house types, the extension that came in 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 and qualified tender ready to submit, schedules and tick sheets ready to issue, a valuation ready to go in, or a final account argued and evidenced. Use us again next job, or do not.
Virtual, so nationwide. Drawings, schedules and accounts travel by email. We work with joinery contractors across England and Wales without a penny of travel on the bill.
Start with one price. Most clients test us on a single enquiry, often the one that arrived at the worst possible moment, 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, a priced tender 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 joinery contractors start with a single price they have not got time for and work outwards from there.
Winning the Work
- ▸Tenders for housing sites
- ▸Prices for extensions and domestic work
- ▸Prices for complex and one-off builds
- ▸First fix and second fix measurement
- ▸Rate build-ups from your own costs
- ▸Pricing by house type and by plot
- ▸Advice on the level to bid at
Qualifying the Price
- ▸Schedules of assumptions
- ▸Inclusions and exclusions
- ▸Labour only or supply and fix scope
- ▸Materials and lead-time risk
- ▸Access, sequence and attendance
- ▸Making good and protection
- ▸Validity periods on materials prices
Setting the Job Up
- ▸Material schedules
- ▸Plant schedules
- ▸Prices for every element of the job
- ▸Tick sheets for weekly booking
- ▸Rates agreed in writing before start
- ▸Quality logs for site supervisors
- ▸Cost reporting against the tender
Running It & Getting Paid
- ▸Interim valuations
- ▸Variations valued
- ▸Remeasures from site figures
- ▸Records for delay and standing time
- ▸Claims for delay
- ▸Final accounts
- ▸Payment disputes and notices
One job or one document. There is no minimum engagement and nothing to sign. If all you need is a price for one extension by Thursday, that is a perfectly good place to start.
Give Your Clients What They Need. Leave the Ugly Maths to Us.
Send us the enquiry you have not had time to start, the job you are unsure how hard to price, 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.