Jacob Austin (00:00:17) - Hi, Jacob Austin here. Owner of QS.Zone. And welcome to episode number 32 of the Subcontractors Blueprint, the show where subcontractors will learn how to ensure profitability, improve cash flow and grow their business. Today's episode, number 32 is going to be about remeasurement.
Remeasurement refers to revisiting the price on the basis of the rates that you tendered at tender stage, and that your order are based on to first determine the price that you need to be paid for the whole of the project, and then to determine the price of any changes within the project. And some of this can be unfamiliar territory. The rules are a framework for measuring and valuing a contract, and that framework is there for a couple of reasons. It should give some consistency across the industry of how things are put together, price wise and contract wise, so that no matter who you're working for, you can accept a bill of quantities and you'll immediately know which sections should refer to your work. And between two different bills of quantities, the same thing should be measured in the same fashion.
Jacob Austin (00:01:21) - So there are rules for each of the different sections of a bill, starting with you. Prelims bits that are non measurable. Bits that, of course, are measurable contractors design works as well as risks, overheads and profit, and sometimes credits, unlike a bill of quantities. I've spent many a time creating them myself and then sending them out to the supply chain to price. Having been involved in a lot of negotiated design and build contracts. It's often one of the busiest times of the project, collating all the drawings, assembling a bill of quantities, and then sending that out to the supply chain so that you can put together your price to negotiate upstream. And I've always favoured doing it myself. Of course, a lot of people out there wouldn't, and that they would view it's too much of a risk if you produce your own price for everything, your own bill of quantities, for everything. When you miss something, it's definitely your error. And okay, that's fine if that's your view. But what the benefits are is I get the certainty of putting my own quantities together.
Jacob Austin (00:02:24) - I know where I've measured things tightly. I know where I might have allowed an extra couple of square meters of this or that if there's any uncertainty. And once you've put a few bills of quantities together and you've seen them deployed on site, you've gone through the remeasurement process with them. You get to know the areas where you need to focus to capture everything. And some of the things that I always used to like to do was to factor in items for how I, or the project manager wanted the job to be done. So if I wanted three visits of a tarmac layer, then I would enumerate three visits and I would tell them that I wanted them to seal the surface in between visits and then spray it off prior to laying the wiring course. And what you can do by capturing all of these things is it just takes away the arguments. You know, that you've allowed the right number of visits because it's there in the black and white on your bill of quantities. You know that the contractor is priced it because they're submitting their price on your bill of quantities, and some contractors will still want to play a little bit of a game and right included against this and that.
Jacob Austin (00:03:25) - But I get the certainty of knowing, I've told you in paper and ink what I want you to price and you've priced it, and then that trickles into the order, because then the order replicates exactly what I wanted. I've got a great means to compare everything when I get my tenders back. It also gives me all of the rights that I need to value the work in the future, with a good basis for valuing variations, a good means of progressing the work as in valuing it for payment during the life of the job. And you also get a good means for assessing your cash flow. Another great thing is it will, over time, give a library of rights for various bits of work and that can be used for pricing future projects. And by using the framework such as the NRM2, what we're getting is a comprehensive list of everything that gets priced. And I think in not too difficult to use table format, and it prompts you to pick up all of the items as you're measuring below quantities.
Jacob Austin (00:04:20) - So if you're following the NRM2 thoroughly, then you should get to the right answer. That, of course, is not to say that you've checked all of the drawings and measured absolutely everything in the right place. Now, sometimes you're going to get sent a job to tender by a contractor, and they're going to send you the full bill of quantities for the job. So what does that look like? Apart from reams of paper, of course, there are usually 8 or 9 sections. The 9 to 1 annexes either does or doesn't get used, depending on whether any additional supporting information needs to be added, such as bits of specifications that might not be mentioned within the design. But the eight other sections are usually a form of tender. A main summary. The prelims, which is usually broken into a list of items which are to be priced within the prelims, and then a pricing schedule itself. The measured work, which is the bit we're interested in, and that bit is then further broken down into each of the building elements.
Jacob Austin (00:05:19) - You've got risks, provisional sums, credits and dayworks. That is the usual elemental structure of a typical project, but what you'll sometimes find is that the person measuring it might tailor that to the project. So if they've got a mixed development with apartments and different zones of housing and the housing slightly different in each area, then they might separate those into separate bills. Or alternatively, if the project is really simple, they might list everything out on the one sheet with a separate bill for each of the work packages that they've measured. And that all gets drawn into one big summary page. So these are just different permutations of what you might encounter when you get your inquiry. And frustratingly, there's no hard and fast rule, even though we're following a very detailed table of hard and fast rules. And then what we need to do is hunt down the particular bill of quantities that you need to price against. Now, if your bills have been prepared by a contractor, it should be fairly well laid out in the form of the work packages.
Jacob Austin (00:06:23) - Sometimes a private practice may measure things in a more elemental format and. What this means is there might be some crossover between different bills, and 90% of the work might be in one place with odd items in a different bill. So one question right away is if you get center for bill of quantities for the whole project, you can always ask the contractor what items would you like me to price and at least gives you half a chance of finding them all. A question that I get asked a few times is how do you know what to measure something in? As in is it a cube? Is it a square? Is it a linear measure? Is it an enumerated item, or are they one off itemized items? And this is where you need to get familiar with your section of the NRM. Now, I'm not saying go and buy the book and read all 300 pages of it, because let's face it, it's not exactly a thrilling read, but the best way for you to get familiar with what needs to be measured in how is for you to review the document itself.
Jacob Austin (00:07:22) - But that said, there are some clues about it. 90% of the time it is 90% of the time. There is a degree of common sense about how things are measured. So let's look at a really basic example of a kid's playground. And what we've got are some precast concrete etchings that run around the perimeter, forming a rectangle. And within that there's a load of tarmac. Now it's fairly straightforward to see that the precast engines that run in a straight line, they should be measured as a straight line. The tarmac, on the other hand, we were never going to measure that as a straight line because it's covering an area. But then the question is, should it be measured as a cube because it's not just the finished surface that we've installed, but the whole thickness of the tarmac. And this is where it comes down to the description. The clue is always in the description. So for this particular item we look at the drawing. We specify the thickness sometimes of more than one layer of tarmac.
Jacob Austin (00:08:18) - So we specify the thickness and we measure the whole area because it's an area of a finished product that we're going to end up with. But we can work out the full volume of the material by times in out that square meter edge against the thickness stated. Hopefully you can see what I mean by that, but let's look at some silly examples to try and underpin the point. So everything relates back to a cube when you excavating and you're filling with concrete that's done in meters cubed. So concrete is quite often measured in meters cubed. But it can also be measured in meters squared. But spot the difference filling concrete foundations into trenches poured against earth or unblinded hardcore. That's a typical description. Now we can also see things such as floor slabs measured with a volume as well. But then what you start to see is the description is factoring in some critical items that we need to know about the piece of work. So for a slab it will tell us what the thickness of that slab is, so that we can look at the volume and understand the size of the finished slab that we're going to be left with, because when we're pricing it, an aspect of the preparation and the finishing is going to be done over a square meter edge rather than to an entire volume of a slab.
Jacob Austin (00:09:33) - Then you've got, say to that slab, you will have a finish that will be brushed or floated and so on. That work is very much done on a square meter basis to the face of the concrete that you've just laid. Well, let's look at brickwork. Brickwork is measured in a square meter. But what you always have stated is the thickness of the brick wall, be it one brick thick or more typically half a brick thick. So again, you can see you can get back to the cube by taking the thickness against the square meter. When you have a band within brickwork, it will specify the height as well as the thickness. And that will be measured as a linear meter. But again, you can get back to that cube by looking at the description. When you're talking about putting a piece of skirting onto a wall, it's measured in linear meters. But what you get given in the description is the height and the thickness of the piece of skirting. So again, you're getting back to the cube.
Jacob Austin (00:10:29) - And even when you looked at painting, painting a wall, it's measured in an area. But you know how many coats of paint. So you've got a thickness within the description. So you can try and get back to that cube again. Now let's talk about re measuring, because a lot of the time re measurements can end up in arguments. And again it's understandable why this is because you've got your contractor who's trying to minimize the amount that he's paying out. You've got your subcontractor who wants to get as much money out of the project as they can. And you've perhaps got some quirks within how your measure is calculated that might not align with how we should measure things according to the rules. Some of those things are done out of practicality sake, and some are just a bit of a quirk of how people work sometimes. And to give a few examples of how these quantity issues can crop up. When we're putting a bill of quantities together, we only have around the quantity once, and that's before it goes into the bill.
Jacob Austin (00:11:28) - So that number that you see is rounded to two decimal places and that's it. But I've heard no end of times when the subcontractor is paying out to their blokes. Now so-and-so's booked in this many meters. This other guy's booked in another so many meters. Those guys have rounded their numbers up. You're adding more rounded numbers together and you're thinking, I've paid out ten metres, I've paid out 100m, whatever. So I'm putting 100m in in my claim. But it doesn't work like that. As I say, it gets worked out to what the actual answer is and the numbers get rounded once at the end. And this is a way that things can get heated, because over the course of a job, you're not necessarily picking up. The quantity issue is arising if you're booking things in that way, and then you get to the end of the job, the contractor has done his remeasure. He knows how much area he's got to pay you, and by the last bit of the job, because you've been paying everybody around it up number for several months, you've only got 50% of the money left to finish the last 5% of the work.
Jacob Austin (00:12:32) - So 2.5% left realize that's a stupid way of describing that. And in all walks of life, you get people that try it on and try and put an extra bit into their claim. You will see that downstream to people that you're working with. No doubt, just as often as I see it from subcontractors to me. So can you rely on measurements that have been taken by the guys doing the work as a means to claiming for your payment? It's down to you as to how much you trust the guys that you're working with, but I would thoroughly recommend doing a check of your own. So it's quite often a grumble that I see, oh, so-and-so's chipped my measure and it will be something like that. You also get people who don't appreciate the rules regarding emissions, so a decorator might pay out all of his lads on the basis of a square meter of a room, and they might not care about the windows. And I've heard this a couple of times as well. Oh, the practicality of measuring the linear meter of reveals for all of the windows.
Jacob Austin (00:13:31) - It just isn't worth the time. And you might think that is the case working downstream to your guys, so you'll pay them for completing the area of the room and not even bother deducting out the window saying, oh well, that pays for the reverse. And then you get to claiming the work and there's a massive discrepancy. And oh look, it's just about the same quantity as the window omission. How could that possibly be? Now, obviously you want to do away with these types of arguments, so it's worth measuring the work in accordance with the set of rules. And a good way to do that is collaboratively with the contractor themselves. It is good for building rapport. You spend a bit of time together with a tape measure, with a laser measure, whatever, walking the site, cheering the fact as you go around. But it also gives you both the confidence of how the quantities of work have been built up, gives you both some ownership of how right it is, and you get a level of trust.
Jacob Austin (00:14:24) - And I say that with hope that there is actually a level of trust because I've seen some dodgy goings on doing measures as well, such as a roofing contractor trying to grab an extra fistful of tape, measure over the ridge of a roof to get an extra meter added to the length, and then at the other end, because the contract is SHS knows what he's doing and he's already pre-measured it. He just shouts out a measure that he measured yesterday instead of reading it off the tape. And then other stupid things like a bricklayers walking the site and saying that half a block is the same as a block, and trying to determine a square meter ridge on the basis of X blocks wide by X blocks high, but all the while rounding up these little half blocks here and there to try and add in extra square meters. Now, if you want to get on, you're going to have to not do these kind of things because it will result in an argument and the inevitable disappointment of not getting paid as much as you wanted to.
Jacob Austin (00:15:24) - There is something to be said for measuring the work on site. The amount of times that I've done a site measure and found things to be different to what is on the drawing, for whatever reason, something that is drawn as a line on a drawing never is a line when it's on site. The thickness of building materials aren't necessarily appreciated properly, and sometimes things are done for practicality sake that you would never perceive on a drawing you'd never pick up, and therefore you might not get paid for something that you've done to try and help. So it is worth walking the site and taking your tape measure and documenting what you see. Then you've got timing. And as with a lot of these things, timing is everything because there will be times when the work that you need to measure is readily available. It's visible, it's there for all to see, and that is the time when you need to be out on site measuring it. When you've skimmed over all of your double boarding around your column casings, it's hard to then go back and demonstrate that there was double boarding.
Jacob Austin (00:16:21) - But if you're taking photographs as you go round and you're measuring things, seeing it, developing those all important. Records, records, records. Then you put yourself in the best position to recover the money that you're due. And this is also where you pick up lots of changes. It is common for the site manager to walk the site and say, oh, you need to do this detail this way, or can you change this to this? And it's not shown on the drawing and those kind of things that your tradies will probably do on site to help the site manager out using your materials, they might not know that it is a change to you. You need to pick those up and measure them and get paid for them. It is worth speaking with your contractor and developing a plan between the two of you to measure the work. You might even call it a measurement plan. You'll go and look at this bit of work whilst it's visible and take the dimensions on it. You might regularise meetings for measuring certain bits, particularly if there's a lot to run at.
Jacob Austin (00:17:17) - The best case scenario for these is measuring things together, because it irons out those bits of conflict as you're walking round. Rather than let a golf develop itself between both of your different measures, but appreciating that that's not always possible, you would at least want to get out there and regularly measure your own work, making sure that you are getting to bits that will be concealed whilst they're still visible. Take photographs, take videos even, and make sure you're capturing your measurements in a logical way so that they can be followed by whoever's got to read them afterwards. One of the worst things that you can see is an A4 sheet of paper with a huge long list of some separated up by commas, like five times eight comma, seven times nine comma, like it's one giant paragraph of dimensions. As you're walking around the site, you can either mark upon a drawing, the actual site dimension that you've taken, and what it correlates to on the drawing that you're looking at. Or alternatively, you take it in book and you write down your measurements in a logical order and put titles to remind yourself and a date.
Jacob Austin (00:18:20) - So on this date, these are the rooms that I measured on this particular project. And the common customs are if you're measuring lineal meters, you write each lineal meter on a line and you draw a line underneath it. Anything that's got a line drawn underneath it, you're adding up at the end. If you're writing down square meter dimensions, you put your width first, then you put your height and you draw, or you write rather a little h after the height. So you can always tell which way round it is. And under each pair of dimensions you draw a line so that again, everything you draw a line under, you're going to add up. But this time, because it's not straight addition, you have to multiply out the answer, extending your line into the next column. You write your total above it. So you've got a two wide by a three high piece of brickwork. You've drawn a line under the three, and then you're totaling up six, with the line extending underneath it to show that you're adding that up.
Jacob Austin (00:19:15) - And if you're following these common customs when it comes to checking your work, when it comes to passing your dims on to somebody else to check when it comes to a dispute over the measure with the contractor, you can refer back to it. You can clearly identify what you've measured, and when the contractor has got no problem in understanding what you've done, you list out your deductions in the same fashion, but you put brackets around them to show that they're negatives. And that applies to both. When you have a pair of dimensions or you have single dimensions that are an omission, the same obviously applies to meters cubed. So you have your length times width times depth. If you put the letter that represents length, width, depth next to it, you'd never have any problem going back and revisiting what you've done. Now, what you need to remember is that you'll be taking these dimensions over quite a long period of time sometimes, and having them presented in a way that you can go back and look at them and comprehend and understand what you've done on a previous visit.
Jacob Austin (00:20:14) - It's part of the key to assembling your measure and representing it to support your claim. You might be working on different sections at a different time. You might have to add up all of the different sections into one overall quantity. So you need to be maintaining organized records. So having a good title system of first the project, then the floor, then the room for argument's sake. So stupid as these things might seem, these are some of the basics that you need to get right to stand a chance of recovering what you need to at the end of the job. Imagine if you've worked your way through all of your teams, and because you haven't organized things in a proper way, you've missed a page out and you might have missed out 50, 60, 100m², whatever. What does that mean to you for the sake of not putting a title on, if you end up with a lot of repetitive work, sometimes it can be worth setting out a predetermined measure list on a couple of sheets of A4 paper that you just go round and fill out as you walk around each section.
Jacob Austin (00:21:13) - This could be really effective if you've got, say, an apartment block to measure and you've got 20 different apartment types to go around, you obviously know what you're going to find in each apartment, so if you set yourself out a measure sheet with a heading for each bit. You need to measure and enough space for you to write the DIMMs underneath. Then you can collate all of those into a file and you've got a complete apartment block measure ready made, ready to write up and put into your application. That might sound really basic, but when you've got a lot of repetitive work, some of these simple things that you can do can really ease the burden, prompt you to remember things that you might otherwise forget, and ultimately help you to get it right, which helps you to get paid. And if you've got a lot of site measurement to do, particularly if it's indoors, a really good laser measurer can be worth its weight in gold. They're not always as reliable. When you're working outdoors, it can be hard to see where the little red dot is lining up, but if you're measuring plaster work or block work indoors, they can be fantastic.
Jacob Austin (00:22:12) - Two presses, write down a dimension, there you go. Some of them can even do little additions and subtractions if you've got odd shaped rooms in that kind of thing. And if you get really nerdy, you can even tell it which is your width and which is your height. And on some of them, you can export that to an Excel file to even save you from typing it up. If site measurement isn't a possibility for you, it is worth investing in some good software. One that I've seen and used a few times is Blue Beam. It can be really simple to mark up a drawing, cover it with coloured boxes to show which bits you've measured as what. You can also see that you've covered it all. The really important thing to do is to make sure that you calibrate and run a check measure to make sure that that's working properly, because there's nothing worse than getting to the end of a measure and realising that it hasn't on all of your length. So 10% out, that could be a disaster.
Jacob Austin (00:23:06) - It can also be a really good way of proving your measure, because you can share a PDF of your marked up drawing exported from the likes of your blue beam with the areas written on it, or with the align measures written on it. And it can be two seconds for somebody to check the calibrations, right? See that it all makes sense and measures are then really easy to agree. I could probably carry on for hours talking about measurement, but before I start boring you to absolute tiers, I'm going to call it a day there, having just covered some of the basics, but of course what I think are the most important points.
Thanks for tuning in today. My mission is to help the 1 million SME contractors working out there within our industry. If you've taken some value away from today's episode, I'd really love it if you'd share the show and pass on that value to somebody else who would benefit from hearing it.
And thanks again. If you like what you've heard and you want to learn more, please do find us at www.QS.Zone. That's the letters Q, S and zone- Z-O-N-E where you can subscribe to our training and support system for like minded subcontractors. In there you'll find templates, how to videos, interviews and more. And it's less than the price of a cup of coffee per day. You can cancel any time. We're also on all your favourite socials at @QS.Zone.
Thanks again! I've been Jacob Austin and you've been awesome.
