Reading a BOQ and Estimate for a Salt Lake Build

Reading a BOQ and Estimate for a Salt Lake Build

If you are holding two or three quotes for a build on a Salt Lake plot and the totals sit lakhs apart, the gap is almost never that one party is cheap and another greedy, it is that the three documents are not describing the same building, and until you can read a Bill of Quantities line by line there is no honest way to tell which of them has priced the house you actually want. One quote has terrace and toilet waterproofing in it and another has quietly left it for later, one has assumed a basic vitrified floor throughout and another has carried a stone in the living areas, and all three arrive looking like one confident number on the covering page.

A BOQ is the only document in a project where your money and your drawings meet inside the same table, so learning to read one is the highest return hour you will spend before signing anything. It is also where the conditions of your particular block in Bidhannagar quietly show up, because how a mixer and steel get onto a plot with neighbours already built to the boundary, how deep the foundation has to go, and how much waterproofing a long humid stretch and a serious monsoon justify, all end up as line items rather than as conversation.

This page goes through what the document should contain, which heads are routinely thin, why the same item prices differently two blocks apart, and how we put an estimate together so that when you change your mind about a floor or a staircase, the cost of that change reaches you the same week instead of at the end.

What a Bill of Quantities actually contains

A Bill of Quantities is, basically, a schedule of every item of work the building needs, where each line carries a description, a unit, a measured quantity and a rate, so quantity times rate gives an amount and the amounts add up to a total. An estimate is that total with a few headings above it, and the distinction matters because a BOQ can be checked while an estimate can only be believed. The units are the fastest way in. Excavation and concrete are measured in cubic metres, brickwork and plaster and flooring in square metres, reinforcement steel in kilograms or tonnes, skirting and railing in running metres, and doors, windows and fixtures by number. Once you know what unit a line is in you can check its quantity against the drawing in front of you, so if your ground floor has a certain built area and the flooring line shows a figure well below it, you have not found a cheaper contractor, you have found a missing room or a missing balcony.

Read the description before the rate. A line that says vitrified tile flooring, and a line that says vitrified tile flooring of a named size, thickness and class laid on a specified bed with matching skirting, are one rate on paper and two different houses in practice, and vague descriptions are where a low total comes from as well as where the argument on site comes from eight months later.

The order the document should be in, and why

Ask for the bill in the sequence the building gets built, because that is the sequence in which you will be paying. Site clearance and demolition, then earthwork and foundation, then the reinforced concrete frame of footings, columns, beams and slabs, then masonry, plaster, waterproofing, flooring, doors and windows, railings and grills, painting, plumbing and sanitary, electrical, and finally external development covering the boundary wall, gate, paving and surface drainage. When the bill runs in build order you can lay it against a programme and read your own cash flow, which is a more useful question than the total, and it is why we treat the bill and the [project timeline and phasing for a Salt Lake house](Project Timeline and Phasing for a Salt Lake House) as one exercise rather than two.

Interiors should sit in a separate package with its own bill, because kitchen, wardrobes, false ceiling and lighting move on a different decision cycle from the shell, often getting settled while the slab is already cast, and folding them into the civil bill is the surest way for a project to lose the ability to say what anything cost.

Why the same line item prices differently two blocks apart

Salt Lake reads as uniform from the road, because the grid of blocks and sectors is planned and the plots are regular, but the plots are also tight, and that is exactly where the money hides. Where neighbours are already built right at the boundary on two sides, the scaffolding, shuttering and external plaster of your own wall face has to be worked out in advance, sometimes with a neighbour's cooperation, and that time is real labour time somebody is paying for. Material cannot be stacked loosely on a tight frontage, so deliveries break into smaller lots and cartage climbs, and debris from pulling down an older house leaves through a lane that is parked solid, so disposal gets priced per trip. Foundation depth, the water table, whether dewatering is needed, and whether an adjoining structure needs shoring before you dig, are all plot specific and must be confirmed for your plot rather than assumed from the block.

All of that belongs in a preliminaries and site establishment head at the top of the bill, along with site office, storage, water and power arrangement and the barricade. A quote carrying no such head has either buried those costs inside its rates, which means you cannot see them, or intends to raise them later as extras. The stock matters too, since a G+3 or G+4 rebuild squeezed between a sixties house and a nineties one is a different access and structural problem from the same building standing free, and Sector V, being the separate commercial and IT belt, prices on a different logic again.

The heads that are routinely thin

Waterproofing is the first. A long humid stretch and a monsoon of this intensity mean terrace slope and outlets, sunken toilet portions, the parapet and slab junction and plinth protection are not refinements, they are the difference between a five year old house and a house with damp walls, and a single generic waterproofing line with no system named is not a price, it is a placeholder.

Water and drainage is the second. Underground reservoir, overhead tank, pump, riser and the sewer or septic arrangement all need to be in the bill with capacities stated, and the drainage connection in particular is worth settling early because it affects levels and plinth, which is why we treat [sewerage and septic connection for a Salt Lake plot](Sewerage and Septic Connection for a Salt Lake Plot) as a design question and not a plumbing afterthought. Third is projections, since chajjas, balcony slabs and canopies carry reinforcement, shuttering, waterproofing and finishing of their own, and they are usually drawn long before anyone prices them, which is the subject of [cantilevers and projections on a Salt Lake building](Cantilevers and Projections on a Salt Lake Building).

Then everything at the finishing edge: grills, mosquito mesh, handrail, wardrobes, kitchen counter and sink, false ceiling, and the sanitary and CP fittings, where the gap between a basic range and a mid range is large enough to move a whole floor's budget. Bathrooms are the most common single source of overrun on a Salt Lake build, so we price them as a defined package rather than a rate, and our bathroom design work exists largely because that package is where decisions and money collide hardest.

Provisional sums, allowances and the words "as per site"

Every honest bill carries some provisional content, because you cannot know a foundation depth before you dig or a fitting selection before the client has seen it, and the right way to carry that is a named sum for a named scope that will be measured and adjusted on actuals. The catch here is that "as per site" and "extra at actual" with no basis and no cap are not allowances, they are open doors, and a bill made mostly of them has no predictive value. Ask for every provisional item to be listed in one place with a rate basis and a measurement method, and ask what the total becomes if each one lands at its upper end.

Rate variation clauses on steel and cement deserve the same treatment, because they are reasonable in principle on a build running over months, but a clause with no reference, no trigger and no ceiling transfers the whole risk to you while reading like boilerplate.

How we put the estimate together

Our bills are written against drawings worked out for your plot rather than against a package, because quantities only mean something if the drawing behind them accounts for your frontage, your boundary conditions, your light and air arriving from your own plot rather than from a neighbour's generosity, and your sanction route. Sumana Kumar stays on the project through sanction and site instead of handing it to a junior once the agreement is signed, which matters for a practical reason, that the person who decided a beam layout is the person who can tell you in one sitting what moving a wall does to the steel, the shuttering and therefore to the bill.

Every option we put in front of you arrives with its cost consequence attached, so you are choosing between a house and a number rather than choosing a house and later discovering a number. Because architecture, interiors and the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation sanction route sit with one team, the bill does not fracture across vendors and you are not the person carrying information between them. For the sanction side of the sequence, [Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation building plan sanction for a commercial office building in Salt Lake](Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation Building Plan Sanction for a Commercial Office Building in Salt Lake) shows how that process is run, and for an older cooperative property the constraints are set out in [renovating a Salt Lake cooperative home: a practical guide](Renovating a Salt Lake Cooperative Home: A Practical Guide).

To see finished work of this kind, Cornerstone House project in Salt Lake is an example of that category of work, and so is Ribbon House project in Baguihati, while our interior design across Salt Lake and the projects collected on our Salt Lake area page give a sense of what the bills behind them were describing.

When a different kind of provider is the better spend

If your scope is genuinely one bathroom, one kitchen or a single room refit in an existing flat, a competent contractor working off a fixed price list will be faster and cheaper than any studio, and a full BOQ exercise is overhead you do not need, which is why we scope that kind of job differently under renovation and remodeling. If you already have a complete tender drawing set and a written specification from another architect and you only want the quantities independently measured, a quantity surveyor or a dedicated estimation service is the cheaper and more correct spend. And if you are buying a ready flat with the builder's fit-out in place, your real conversation is about finishes, storage and lighting, not a structural bill at all.

A studio earns its fee when the building is still being decided, when the plot has constraints that change the plan, and when somebody has to hold the drawings, the specification, the bill and the sanction set in agreement with each other for a year or more. At the end of the day a BOQ is only as good as the drawing behind it, and the drawing is only as good as the thinking about your plot.

Where to start

Bring whatever you have, a survey, an older sanction set, a contractor's quote you are unsure about, or just the plot address and a sense of what you want. We will tell you what the document in your hand is promising and what it is leaving out, and if you want us to design the building you will get a bill written against drawings made for that plot, from a studio working out of New Town across the Salt Lake, New Town and Rajarhat belt since 2014. Get in touch and we can read your quote line by line before you commit to anything.