An extra estimator, when you need one
We work alongside your team, not instead of it. Send the jobs your estimators don't have time for, or a price you want checked before it goes in.
Estimating
A priced estimate built on your BOQ and drawings, tailored to your requirements, with quantities, rates and assumptions shown for every line.
Programme, included
Every estimate comes with the programme behind it: durations, crew and plant, so you can see the productivity the rates assume.
Methodology, on request
Where a tender asks for one, we can write the construction methodology from your drawings and the specification. Quoted separately.
What drives the fee
-
Rate-drivenOne discipline, production rates we already hold. Wet services, or a cart, haul and place grader package. Quantities against known rates, with the programme behind them. Where a job sits in the range depends on the number of disciplines and the complexity of the work: a smaller subdivision sits towards the lower end, and work within a road corridor or around live services towards the top.$750 to $1,500
-
Build-up drivenSeveral disciplines and the interfaces between them, built up line by line.$1,800 to $3,500
-
Method-drivenProduction rates or access requirements drive the rate, so we work through them with you and agree them first, in a scoping workshop, before doing anything else.Workshop $650
The workshop gives you a method statement and a firm fee for the estimate. Proceed and the $650 comes off that fee in full.
Priced separately
- Take-off where there is no BOQQuoted at the scope check
- Response schedules and other non-price submission documentsPer schedule
- Construction methodology as a standalone documentQuoted
- Express turnaround1.5 times the fee
A response schedule runs anywhere from two hours to two days depending on the template you are handed, so it is priced on its own rather than buried in the estimate fee.
What moves a job up a band
- How many disciplines sit in the scope
- Live traffic, staging or road occupancy
- Erosion, sediment and environmental controls
- Ground conditions and groundwater
- Access and working hour restrictions
- Documentation the tender asks for beyond the price
Read your own job down this list and you will know roughly which band it sits in before you send it to us.
See what you get
Extracts from a synthetic example project: a 180 m local road with a 7 m carriageway. The estimate and programme come as standard; the methodology is provided on request.
| Item | Qty | Unit | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Site establishment and disestablishment | 1 | item | 18,500.00 | 18,500.00 |
| Clear and grub | 2,340 | m² | 3.20 | 7,488.00 |
| Bulk earthworks, cut to spoil | 1,450 | m³ | 28.00 | 40,600.00 |
| Subgrade trim and compact | 1,440 | m² | 5.50 | 7,920.00 |
| Select fill, CBR15, 300 mm | 432 | m³ | 68.00 | 29,376.00 |
| Subbase, CBR45, 200 mm | 288 | m³ | 105.00 | 30,240.00 |
| Base, CBR80, 150 mm | 216 | m³ | 128.00 | 27,648.00 |
| Prime and primerseal | 1,260 | m² | 8.20 | 10,332.00 |
| Asphalt AC14, 40 mm | 1,260 | m² | 42.00 | 52,920.00 |
| Barrier kerb and channel | 360 | lm | 78.00 | 28,080.00 |
| Subsoil drain, 100 mm | 360 | lm | 56.00 | 20,160.00 |
| Stormwater, 375 RCP | 185 | lm | 385.00 | 71,225.00 |
| Direct cost | 344,489.00 | |||
| Site overheads, time related and fixed | ||||
| Project management and site supervision | 8 | wk | 4,850.00 | 38,800.00 |
| Site office, amenities and services | 8 | wk | 1,150.00 | 9,200.00 |
| Traffic management, signage and shuttle | 8 | wk | 2,950.00 | 23,600.00 |
| Survey set-out and as-constructed | 1 | item | 9,800.00 | 9,800.00 |
| Testing, NATA and lot conformance | 1 | item | 7,400.00 | 7,400.00 |
| Environmental controls and maintenance | 1 | item | 6,900.00 | 6,900.00 |
| Site overheads | 95,700.00 | |||
| Direct cost and site overheads | 440,189.00 | |||
| Corporate overhead, 5.0% | 22,009.45 | |||
| Company profit, 9.0% | 41,597.86 | |||
| Sell total, excluding GST | 503,796.31 | |||
What sets the method
The street stays open to residents, and the drainage sits beneath the new kerb line at 1.6 m. One lane cannot be held beside an open trench on a 7 m carriageway, so the works are built in four completed blocks rather than opened as one long site. Side tracks are not permitted, and any lane returned to traffic must be sealed before it is opened. Those two requirements, taken together, set everything that follows.
Direction of construction
Built from the downstream outlet, upstream against chainage. Every pipe joint discharges into a completed line, the trench drains itself after rain, and the outlet structure, the item carrying the most unknowns, is finished before any trench is opened upstream.
The cycle inside each block
- Establish the shuttle, advance signage and speed zoning.
- Strip topsoil and demolish redundant crossings and culverts.
- Pothole and prove every service before excavation.
- Trench, lay and joint the drainage, shored on the traffic side.
- Backfill and compact in layers, test by lot, reinstate every property access before nightfall.
- Box out the widening, place select fill and capping, trim and compact subgrade.
- Subsoil drain and kerb, then subbase and base placed against the completed kerb.
- Reopen the block to two lanes and advance the shuttle to the next.
Traffic management
Single lane reversible flow under portable signals, held overnight rather than reset each shift, so the drainage crew runs ahead of the road box instead of both being forced into one shift on a 1.6 m trench.
- Three controllers are carried, not two. A controller on stop and slow duties is entitled to a paid break every two hours, and a two person crew cannot provide that relief without stopping work.
- Variable message signs installed ahead of any work, with the traffic management plan lodged on acceptance so the authority review runs in parallel with mobilisation.
- No unprotected level difference is left beside the trafficked lane at the end of any shift. Accesses are plated or backfilled daily.
Surfacing
Because no lane is returned to traffic unsealed, sealing the package in a single visit at the end is not available. The works are primed in stages as blocks reach base level, with the final seal applied in one pass at completion. Staging the primer also caps how much unsealed base is exposed at any one time, which matters when the works fall at the back end of the wet season.
Procurement drives the start date
Reinforced concrete pipe carries a ten to twelve week manufacturing lead time. Orders are placed on the date of acceptance so that delivery lands with the completion of the outlet structure and the opening of the first block, rather than becoming the reason the first block waits.
Quality and conformance
Lots are tested as they are built, not retrospectively. No block is sealed or handed back until its density and level records are complete and accepted, and the testing effort is priced rather than assumed.
- Field density testing to the relevant standard, counted by lot and allowed for in the estimate
- Laboratory compaction and concrete sample sets tied to the pour and lot schedule
- Survey set out and conformance hours carried as a line item, not absorbed
- Erosion and sediment controls installed before ground is disturbed and maintained throughout
- Residents notified before work reaches their frontage, with a site contact displayed at both ends
Every sequencing decision comes from the drawings and the specification, not from a template.
- Programme duration
- 8 weeks
- Time-related site overheads
- $95,700
- Against the estimate
- as priced
Set by the production rates aboveFixed duration