An investigation of the contractor's use of bills of quantities

The building contractor is dependent upon information supplied by designers in order to price and plan his work, deploy resources and set up control procedures necessary for the prosecution of the contract. The bill of quantities is an important information source which provides the financial link between the client and his contractor. However, despite the fact that the primary objective of the bill is that of a tender document, once the contract is let, it serves management in the planning, buying and manufacturing procedures. The research examines the bill of quantities as an information source for the contractor and discovers that the information could better serve the many functions of contracting in addition to that of tendering and payments. The criteria by which the utility of information given in the bill is judged are format, adequacy and independence. Format refers to the way in which information is presented. Adequacy refers to whether a contractor must make additional allowances in order to make use of the information. Independence refers to the ability of information to satisfy the contractor’s requirements without reference to additional information sources. The utility of the bill in its service to the contracting process is established by expert judges in the principal study. The conclusions reached in the principal study are then submitted to a larger sample of expert opinion for validation. The validation is subdivided into two groups, contractors' quantity surveyors and others, who are shown to differ in their views on some matters. It is concluded that the bill serves contracting to a far greater extent than may previously have been supposed, and that enormous potential exists for the wider use of quantified and specification data.