Quantity Surveying & Estimating · Nationwide · Virtual
A Quantity Surveyor for Landscaping & Paving.
Hard and soft landscaping priced labour only, labour and plant, or the lot: measured properly, tendered remeasurable, and caveated so that what is in the ground stays the client's risk instead of quietly becoming yours.
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
Landscapers Carry Risk Nobody Paid Them For.
The paving is laid to line and level and the planting takes. The margin disappears into the ground: into what was under it, what had to be taken away, and the weeks spent waiting for somebody else to finish.
A lump sum with the ground in it
Priced as a fixed figure against drawings that show finished levels and nothing about what is underneath them. Every unknown between formation and finish is then yours, at whatever quantity the ground decides.
Whatever came out, and where it went
Muck away is a tipping charge, a haulage cost and a waste classification, and none of the three is known when the price goes in. Absorbed into a rate per square metre, it is the fastest way to lose a job.
Last on site, prelims still running
Landscaping goes in at the end, so every delay on the whole development lands on your programme. Supervision, welfare, plant and fencing carry on costing weekly, and the rates were priced for a summer that finished two months ago.
Areas released full of everything else
Surplus materials, stored kit, a compound that has not moved and scaffold still standing. The gang works around it at half output, and the rate assumed a clear site.
None of that is a landscaping problem. It is a tender problem: every one of those costs is decided by how the price was structured and what it said before the job started, and by then it is far too late to say it.
The Work · How You Want It Priced
Labour. Labour and Plant. Or the Lot.
Hard and soft landscaping, paving, external works and planting, priced the way you actually intend to carry out the work, rather than forced into whatever format the last enquiry happened to use.
Labour Only
Where the client or main contractor supplies
Rates for the labour element alone, measured against the same quantities as everything else, with attendances, plant, materials and muck away clearly identified as being provided by others. It sounds like the simplest way to price a job and it is the one where the most arguments start, because everybody assumes a different split.
Labour and Plant
Your gangs and your machines
Labour and the plant to go with it: excavators, dumpers, rollers, whackers, saws and small tools, priced against the measured work with plant standing and additional hire identified separately. What you supply and what you do not is written down before anybody turns a sod.
Labour, Plant & Materials
The full package, supply and fix
The complete package: sub-base, laying course, paving, kerbs, edgings, drainage, topsoil, turf and planting, priced against your own buying terms and your usual suppliers, with waste and breakage allowed properly and long-lead or seasonal items flagged at tender.
Housing sites, commercial schemes and everything between. Estate roads and driveways, car parks and public realm, courtyards, play areas, planting and establishment. Priced by plot, by phase or by area, whichever way the job is actually going to be built and paid for.
The Specialism · How the Tender Is Structured
Remeasurable, Not Lump Sum.
On this work the drawings show what the finished job looks like, not what it takes to get there. A price structured as a schedule of rates and remeasured on completion is the only honest way to tender it.
What a lump sum actually costs you
- ▸Every quantity on the drawing is an estimate until somebody digs. Fix the price and you have agreed to build whatever the ground turns out to require, for the same money.
- ▸Price the risk properly inside a lump sum and you look expensive against a competitor who has simply ignored it. Price it keenly and you are gambling the job.
- ▸There is no mechanism to be paid for the extra when it appears, because the figure was agreed before anybody knew there would be any.
- ▸The client is not getting certainty either. They are getting a number that will be argued about later, from a contractor who may not survive being right.
How we structure it instead
- ▸All works tendered as remeasurable, against a schedule of rates built from measured quantities and your own real costs.
- ▸Excavation and everything that depends on ground conditions expressly remeasurable, with the tendered quantities stated as provisional.
- ▸A rate for every item, so when the quantity changes the money changes with it, automatically, without a negotiation.
- ▸The known work priced keenly, because the unknown work is no longer hiding inside it. That is what makes the tender competitive as well as safe.
A well caveated tender is a cheaper tender. Risk that is excluded and rated does not have to be padded into every rate. The client gets a keener price for the work that is certain, and pays for the rest only if it turns up.
The Specialism · Ground Risk & Disposal
What Is in the Ground Is Not Your Risk.
Nobody surveys the ground before a landscaping package is priced, and nothing on the drawing tells you what is down there. So the tender has to say plainly that it is excluded unless it was specifically included.
Excluded unless specifically included
- ▸Existing services encountered, live or abandoned, including locating, protecting, diverting and working by hand around them.
- ▸Rock and any material requiring breaking out, pecking or specialist attack.
- ▸Existing hardcore, made ground, slabs, foundations and buried obstructions.
- ▸Soft spots and unsuitable material: excavating out, disposing of it and replacing with imported fill.
- ▸Contaminated or otherwise classified material, and anything requiring specialist handling or licensed disposal.
- ▸Groundwater, dewatering and working in waterlogged ground.
- ▸Formation levels outside tolerance where somebody else set them.
Muck away, measured separately
- ▸Disposal is a haulage cost, a tipping charge and a waste classification, and not one of the three is known when the price goes in.
- ▸So it is stated as a separate measurable item at a rate per load or per cubic metre, remeasured on what actually leaves site.
- ▸Rates given on the basis that the material is what the client says it is, with the position reserved if it turns out to be classified differently at the gate.
- ▸Buried inside a rate per square metre it is invisible, unarguable and, on a bad site, larger than the margin on the whole package.
Excluded from the rate, not refused. Every item here is offered back to the client at a stated rate. You are not declining the work, you are telling them what it costs if it is there, and charging nothing for it if it is not.
The Specialism · Prelims & Release
Prelims by the Week. Areas Actually Clear.
Landscaping goes in last, so it absorbs the whole development's delay. The two things that protect you are prelims priced by the week and a written statement of what a released area looks like.
Prelims as a weekly rate
Site establishment, supervision, welfare, temporary fencing, security, small tools and site running costs priced as a rate per week and stated as excluded from the measured rates. If the programme runs, the prelims run with it and they get paid rather than absorbed.
Plant standing and additional hire
Plant on site with nothing to do because an area is not ready, and hire running beyond the period allowed. Both identified as separate rated items, claimed from the records as they arise rather than remembered at the end.
Areas released clear and ready
Released complete, to the right formation level, clear of surplus materials, stored kit, compounds and scaffold, with access for plant and somewhere to put what comes out. A stated rate applies for return visits and standing where they are not.
Season and weather stated
Turfing, seeding and planting are seasonal, and out-of-season work fails and gets replaced. The tender states the season assumed, the ground conditions assumed, and what happens when the programme pushes the work outside either of them.
The last trade on site absorbs everybody else's delay. Unless the tender says otherwise. Weekly prelims and a written release condition are the two clauses that decide whether a six-month job that takes eleven months still makes money.
After You Win It · Running the Job
Running the Job Without Losing the Paperwork.
On remeasurable work the money is in the measure. What you get paid is decided by what somebody wrote down at the time, not by what the drawing said at tender.
Material and plant schedules
Sub-base, laying course, paving, kerbs, edgings, drainage, topsoil, turf and planting measured by area or phase, in the units your suppliers quote in, and plant set against the programme rather than hired when somebody needs it and forgotten when they do not.
Remeasures from site records
Your foreman takes basic figures: depths, areas, loads away, dig-outs and quantities of imported fill. We turn them into a professional remeasure against the tendered rates. He does not need to be a surveyor and you do not need to be on site.
Interim valuations and prelims
Monthly applications claiming measured work, remeasure, muck away, excluded items that have turned up, plant standing and the weekly prelims, in the format the contract demands and inside the dates it sets.
Records for the excluded items
Services found, rock hit, soft spots dug out, areas not released and plant standing, recorded at the time on sheets the site manager signs. Every caveat in your tender is only worth what the site records can prove.
Built for foremen, 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 remeasurable job is a measure and a negotiation. It usually goes badly for whichever side turned up with a folder of tickets instead of a valued position.
Final accounts
The package closed on a full remeasure: work as built against the tendered rates, excluded items applied, disposal remeasured, prelims run to the actual programme and retention accounted for. Negotiated by somebody who settles them for a living.
Claims for delay and standing
Areas released late, plant standing, out-of-season working and a programme that ran twice as long as the one you priced. Set out from the records 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 statutory deadlines that decide who wins the argument regardless of the merits. Checked when one lands on you, and answered in the same terms.
Establishment and retention
Maintenance and establishment periods on planting keep you on the hook long after the paving is finished. Both the obligation and the retention release chased and argued properly rather than written off.
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, take-offs and schedules of rates, labour only and labour and plant build-ups, schedules of caveats and exclusions, prelim build-ups, material and plant schedules, remeasures, interim valuations, variations, delay records, claims, final accounts and payment disputes: all of it at the same rate, from a single hour.
A housing site external works package
Typically 8 to 15 hours
£280 to £525
Measured and priced as a schedule of rates, with the ground risk caveated and disposal stated as a separate item.
A commercial landscaping package
Typically 12 to 25 hours
£420 to £875
Hard and soft measured from the drawings, priced against your buying terms, with prelims built up as a weekly rate.
Monthly valuation and remeasure
Typically 3 to 6 hours a month
£105 to £210
Claims the measure, the disposal, the excluded items and the prelims in the month they arise rather than at the end.
A final account with claims
Typically 12 to 20 hours
£420 to £700
A full remeasure 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 foremen to be trained on. The whole thing runs over email and the phone.
Send us the enquiry
The layout drawings, the levels, the specification, the planting schedule, or the account that has stalled. Tell us whether you want it priced labour only, labour and plant, or the full package.
We scope the hours
We come back with what is involved, how long it will take at £35 an hour, and whether we can hit your return date. You approve it before anything starts.
You get the work back
A measured schedule of rates with the caveats and exclusions set out, a prelim build-up by the week, material and plant schedules, a valuation ready to go in, or a final account argued and evidenced.
Caveats you can reuse. The schedule of exclusions we write for one tender can be attached to every price you send out afterwards. Most clients get more out of that single document than anything else we produce.
Start with one price. Most clients test us on a single enquiry, usually the one with the ground risk nobody wants to own, before they use us for anything else. That is exactly how it is meant to work.
Virtual, so nationwide. Drawings, schedules and accounts travel by email. We work with landscaping and paving contractors across England and Wales without a penny of travel on the bill, and every deliverable arrives as a document your team already knows how to read.
The Full Schedule · Everything We Produce
The Complete Schedule of Documents.
Take any one of them on its own. Most landscaping and paving contractors start with a single price they have not got time for and work outwards from there.
Winning the Work
- ▸Tenders for housing external works
- ▸Commercial landscaping packages
- ▸Labour only rate build-ups
- ▸Labour and plant build-ups
- ▸Full supply and fix pricing
- ▸Schedules of rates, remeasurable
- ▸Prelim build-ups as weekly rates
Caveats & Exclusions
- ▸Services encountered
- ▸Rock and breaking out
- ▸Existing hardcore and obstructions
- ▸Soft spots and unsuitable material
- ▸Contaminated and classified material
- ▸Muck away as a separate measured item
- ▸Areas released clear and to level
Setting the Job Up
- ▸Material schedules by area or phase
- ▸Plant schedules against the programme
- ▸Prices for every area or phase
- ▸Tick sheets for weekly booking
- ▸Site record sheets for excluded items
- ▸Quality logs for foremen
- ▸Cost reporting against the tender
Running It & Getting Paid
- ▸Remeasures from foreman's figures
- ▸Interim valuations
- ▸Weekly prelims claimed
- ▸Plant standing and additional hire
- ▸Claims for delay and disruption
- ▸Final accounts and full remeasure
- ▸Payment disputes and notices
One job or one document. There is no minimum engagement and nothing to sign. If all you need is a schedule of caveats to attach to the prices you already send out, that is a perfectly good place to start.
Put a Quantity Surveyor on Your Next Tender Without Putting One on Your Payroll.
Send us the enquiry with the ground risk nobody wants to own, the site that has run twice as long as the programme, 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.