Quantity Surveying & Estimating · Nationwide · Virtual
A Quantity Surveyor for Roofing Contractors.
Housing sites, commercial re-roofs, slating, tiling, flat roofing and cladding: every covering measured properly off the drawings, priced from your own costs, and tendered on conditions that protect the rate when the weather and the scaffold do not.
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
Roofers Lose It on Paper, Not on the Roof.
The covering goes on and it keeps the water out. The margin disappears in a rate that was never properly measured, and in the two things a roofing contractor never controls: the scaffold and the weather.
Priced off the plan, not the slope
A roof is bigger than the footprint underneath it, and how much bigger depends entirely on the pitch. Price a steep roof off the plan area and the shortfall is on every plot of that house type for the length of the site.
The shape nobody priced
Two roofs with the same area do not cost the same to build. Hips, valleys, abutments, dormers and cut work are where the labour is, and they are measured in linear metres, which is exactly why a rate per square metre hides them.
Standing, and never claiming it
Wind stops the gang, rain stops the felt, the scaffold is not boarded to the right lift and nobody can start. Every one of those is somebody else's cost, and almost none of it ever reaches an application.
Won it, then never managed it
The job is priced, then run on memory. Variations installed and not claimed, applications guessed at, and a final account settled for whatever is offered at the end of it.
None of that is a roofing problem. It is a commercial one, and commercial work is the job in a roofing 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, Re-Roofs, Every Covering.
Slating, tiling, flat roofing, leadwork and cladding: new build, refurbishment and re-roof. If it keeps water out of a building, we can measure it and price it.
Housing Sites
Priced by house type, scheduled by plot
Every house type measured from the roof plan and sections: true slope areas, ridge, hip, valley, verge, eaves and abutment lengths, dry-fix systems, underlay, battens, ventilation and the fixing specification the wind calculation actually requires. Priced as a rate per plot and scheduled across the development, so you have a rate that survives two years of the same house type.
Commercial Re-Roofs
Strip, dispose, replace, over a live building
Re-roofs and overlays on occupied and operational buildings, where the covering is the straightforward part and the strip-out, disposal, temporary weather protection, phasing and restricted working hours are where the money is. All of it measured, priced and stated rather than assumed.
Slating, Tiling & Cladding
Every covering and every system
Natural and fibre cement slate, clay and concrete tile, single ply, built-up felt, liquid applied and asphalt, leadwork and flashings, rainscreen, standing seam, profiled sheeting and composite panel. Priced on the system actually specified rather than on the nearest thing we have priced before.
Every type of roof, and the awkward ones especially. Complex shapes, difficult access, listed and heritage work and anything where the detailing carries more risk than the area does. Those are the jobs where measuring it properly earns its fee several times over.
The Specialism · How the Price Is Built
The Roof Area Is Not the Plan Area.
A square metre rate is only worth anything if somebody has measured the right square metres, and on a roof, the things that actually drive the cost are not measured in square metres at all.
Where a roofing rate goes wrong
- ▸Area taken off the plan rather than on the slope, so the steeper the roof, the more of it you are laying for nothing.
- ▸A rate per square metre carried across from a simple gable roof onto one with four hips, two valleys and three dormers, where the labour is completely different.
- ▸The fixing specification assumed rather than checked, so the price does not cover the clips, nails and mechanical fixing the exposure actually calls for.
- ▸Underlay, battens, ventilation, dry-fix, lead and flashings treated as small items, when together they are a substantial part of the material cost.
How we measure and price it
- ▸True slope areas calculated from the pitch and the roof plan, by covering type, with openings and rooflights taken as they are.
- ▸Ridge, hip, valley, verge, eaves, abutment and dormer detailing measured in linear metres and priced separately, because that is where the labour actually sits.
- ▸The fixing and ventilation specification priced as specified, and flagged where the drawings and the exposure do not agree with each other.
- ▸Materials priced against your own buying terms and your usual merchant, with breakage and waste allowed properly rather than forgotten.
You keep the build-up. The take-off and the rate build-up come to you with the price, so you can defend the number, value variations against it and reuse it on the next house type that looks like this one.
The Specialism · Conditions & Exclusions
Scaffold, Weather, and Who Pays for Them.
A roofing rate assumes a scaffold you can work off and weather you can work in. You control neither, so the tender has to say what it assumes about both, and what happens when they are not there.
What it costs when it is not stated
- ▸A gang travels, arrives, cannot get on the roof and goes home. That day is paid for by somebody, and if the tender is silent it is paid for by you.
- ▸Scaffold at the wrong lift, not boarded out, no edge protection or no loading capacity: every one of those stops the job and none of them is your doing.
- ▸Wind and rain stop work more often on this trade than on any other, and a rate that quietly assumed a dry autumn is a rate that loses money in a wet one.
- ▸On re-roofs, what is found under the existing covering is nobody's assumption until it becomes your problem.
What we state and price on its own
- ▸Scaffold, edge protection and access by others, to stated lift heights and loading, with a rate for alterations and for abortive visits.
- ▸Standing time and abortive travel where work is prevented, at a stated rate per gang per day.
- ▸Temporary weather protection and temporary roofs, priced separately rather than assumed.
- ▸Strip out, waste, skips and disposal on re-roofs, measured and rated rather than allowed for.
- ▸Asbestos survey and any removal excluded, and carried out by others under the appropriate controls.
- ▸Loading out and hoisting materials to roof level, and any craneage or telehandler attendance.
- ▸Out-of-hours and phased working over live and occupied buildings.
Excluded from the rate, not refused. Every one of these is offered back to the client at a price. You are not being awkward, you are telling them what a working scaffold and a clear run are worth, and what it costs you when they cannot provide one.
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 to the schedule you priced and keeping the records that make the conditions in your tender worth something.
Material schedules
Tiles and slates by type with the batch and breakage allowance, battens, underlay, dry-fix components, ventilation, lead by code and size, fixings, insulation and membrane, measured by plot, roof or area, in the units your merchant quotes in. Use it to buy against your tendered allowance and to spot immediately when a house type is consuming more than it was priced at.
Prices and tick sheets
Every plot, elevation or roof area priced and listed on a simple sheet before work starts. The supervisor ticks what is complete and the booking is done: no measuring, no valuing part-finished roofs, and the same sheet pays your gangs and supports your application to the client.
Weather and standing logs
A one-line-a-day record of what stopped work and why: wind, rain, scaffold not ready, area not released. It costs a supervisor a minute and it is the entire evidence base for every standing-time and delay claim you will make later.
The weather log is the cheapest document on this page. It is also the one that decides whether the standing-time rate in your tender is a real entitlement or just a sentence nobody can evidence at the end of the job.
Running the Job · Monthly Commercial Work
Running the Job Without Losing the Paperwork.
Monthly documents that claim what you are owed, price what you were asked to do, and leave a record somebody can use when the job is questioned a year later.
Interim valuations
Monthly applications claiming everything you are owed: roofs complete, work in progress, materials on site, standing time, variations and retention, in the format the contract demands and inside the dates it sets.
Variations valued
Specification changes, revised details, added rooflights and dormers, changes of covering and additional leadwork, valued against your tendered rates and confirmed in writing while the person who instructed them is still on site.
Standing time claimed
The days lost to weather, scaffold and access, claimed monthly at the rates you stated, from the log your supervisor keeps. This is the money the conditions in your tender were written to protect, and it only arrives if somebody claims it.
Quality logs for supervisors
Simple records your supervisors can complete on the plot: underlay and batten gauge, fixing specification, ventilation, lead and flashing detail, 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.
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.
Final accounts
The package closed on a measured position: roofs complete, variations valued, standing time and abortive visits applied, delay costs supported and retention accounted for. Negotiated by somebody who settles them for a living and knows what a normal outcome looks like.
Claims for delay and standing
Weather, scaffold not ready, plots released late, out-of-sequence working and phased handovers that were never in the programme. Set out from the log 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.
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, roof area take-offs, rate build-ups against your buying terms, schedules of conditions and exclusions, material schedules, prices and tick sheets, weather and standing logs, interim valuations, variations, standing time claims, delay claims, final accounts and payment disputes: all of it at the same rate, billed by the hour, from a single hour.
A housing site roofing tender
Typically 8 to 15 hours
£280 to £525
Every house type measured on the slope with the linear details priced separately, and a schedule across the development.
A commercial re-roof or cladding
Typically 12 to 25 hours
£420 to £875
Measured and priced with the strip out, disposal, protection and phasing stated rather than absorbed into the rate.
Monthly valuation and standing
Typically 3 to 6 hours a month
£105 to £210
Claims the roofs, variations and standing time in the month they happen, rather than arguing about weather in November.
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 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 roof plans, the sections, the specification, the house types, or the survey photographs on a re-roof. A phone call and an email is enough to start, and there is no form to fill in.
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, priced tender with the conditions and exclusions set out, material schedules ready to buy against, a valuation ready to go in, or a final account argued and evidenced.
Every covering, every shape. Slate, tile, felt, single ply, asphalt, lead and cladding. If it is unusual, awkward or heritage, that is the sort we would rather have than a simple gable.
Start with one price. Most clients test us on a single enquiry, usually the one that landed at the worst possible moment, 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 roofing 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 roofing 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 by house type and by plot
- ▸Commercial re-roof and overlay pricing
- ▸Cladding and rainscreen pricing
- ▸True slope area take-offs
- ▸Ridge, hip, valley and verge measured
- ▸Rate build-ups against your buying terms
Conditions & Exclusions
- ▸Scaffold and access by others
- ▸Stated lift heights and loading
- ▸Standing time and abortive visits
- ▸Temporary weather protection
- ▸Strip out, waste and disposal
- ▸Asbestos survey and removal by others
- ▸Loading out, hoisting and craneage
Setting the Job Up
- ▸Material schedules by plot or roof
- ▸Buying schedules against the tender
- ▸Prices for every plot or roof area
- ▸Tick sheets for weekly booking
- ▸Weather and standing logs
- ▸Quality logs for site supervisors
- ▸Cost reporting against the tender
Running It & Getting Paid
- ▸Interim valuations
- ▸Variations valued
- ▸Standing time claimed monthly
- ▸Records for delay and disruption
- ▸Claims for delay and loss and expense
- ▸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 schedule of conditions 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 short return date, the re-roof nobody wants to price, or the site where the gangs have been standing since October. We will tell you what is involved and how many hours it will take before you commit to anything.