Bill of Quantities

A bill of quantities — BoQ — is the measured schedule of work items and quantities prepared to a standard method, against which tenders are priced and work is valued.

The BoQ is the shared arithmetic of a traditional procurement: every tenderer prices the same quantities, so the comparison is rates, not guesswork. The standard methods — NRM2 for construction works in the UK — exist so that a metre of skirting means the same thing in every tender.

Its weakness is its own accuracy. Quantities that drift from the drawings become variations before anyone has met on site, which is why remeasurement contracts exist and why the honest answer to a wildly divergent tender is usually a divergence in the bills. The commercial skill is knowing when the bills are the contract and when they are just the starting bid.

Related: measurement · tender · variations