One record, made where the work happens.
The bill of quantities your client issued, the quantities your surveyor measured this morning with the take-off attached, and every bag that left your store. On the phones your team already carries.
14structures on one site, running in parallel. The job this was built against.
Built on a live job
Every screen was built for a working contract and tested against its real bills of quantities, its real deliveries and its real people, on a company running several structures at once for over a year. Where the software disagreed with the site, the software changed.
The site and the spreadsheet
Quantities go in a notebook and get typed up later. Sketches arrive as photos in a chat. Deliveries are signed for on paper. At month end someone reconciles it all by hand, and the question nobody can answer is the one that matters: which work is making money and which is losing it?
Here, quantities are entered where they are measured, evidence is attached to them, and every cost is coded to the work it belongs to as it is recorded. The valuation and the margin fall out of that, because there is nothing else for them to be made of.
The variation writes itself
Every time your surveyor saves, the cumulative quantity is set against the BOQ quantity for that structure. The moment it crosses, the line turns red that day and a draft variation is raised for the excess. It stays current as more work goes in, withdraws if the quantity comes back down, and locks once you decide.
Your surveyor sees the flag and the quantity. The rate is copied inside the database and never reaches his phone.
The BOQ, exactly as issued
We load your tender BOQ as your consultant issued it: priced items, empty items, provisional and PC sums, contingencies, sub-totals, collections and headings. Lines he never numbered are given an ID so they still appear on an IPC.
The load reconciles to the grand total on his first page, not the summary tab. Where his bill contradicts itself it stays contradicted. That is what you signed, and you correct it on site as a variation.
Take-off attached to the claim
Your surveyor picks the BOQ line on the structure, enters what was built, and photographs the take-off sheet onto that entry. It works in flight mode and uploads when the signal returns. The sketch is filed against that item and that day.
A worklist shows which claimed quantities still have no take-off behind them, so you close the gap before the consultant asks.
The IPC and its sketches
Gross value of work done, approved variations, materials on site, less retention, less advance recovery, less previously certified. Exported as Excel in the layout your consultant already signs.
Beside it, one ZIP with a folder per BOQ item holding that item's take-off sketches and site photographs in bill order, ready to print. Both are assembled from the measurement your surveyor has already made.
Every bag, three destinations
Your store keeper records goods received against the delivery note in quantities and hands the supplier's bill to the secretary, who prices it. The man receiving the goods never sees a price.
Stock leaves to the plant, a named project, or shared. Nobody at the store window at six in the morning can say which building, and a system that demands it gets a guess and reports the guess back as a cost.
The man who approves an issue is not the man who hands it over. A foreman or site engineer approves; only the store keeper or you can issue. It is the database that refuses.
What every material cost you
Every priced supplier invoice line stays: by material, by supplier, with its date. When a quotation lands you argue from your own record instead of your memory, and you price the next tender on what the last one cost.
Steel quoted in dollars is stored with the rate on the day. Every issue out of the store is costed at a weighted average that moves with each bill you approve, so the cost landing on the work is what the material actually cost you.
Where the material went
A loss does not announce itself, and it is rarely only cement. You batch your own concrete and press your own blocks, so the record is kept at every point the material changes hands.
- At the gate: the man who receives records a quantity and never sees a price. The bill is priced by someone who never touched the goods.
- At the price: every priced line stays, by material, supplier and date, so a rate that moves is argued about this morning.
- At the store door: whoever approves an issue is not whoever hands it over.
- Between store and work: your mix designs say what a cubic metre of C25 and an 8-inch block should consume, of every material in them. Multiply by what the batching plant and the block yard actually produced, set it against what the store issued, and the difference is a quantity, with a date, per material.
- On the shelf: a physical count against the system balance, for everything in the store.
- In the tank: diesel issued to a machine, so a thirsty excavator shows as a machine and not one line on a fuel bill.
Nothing is deleted. A correction is a new entry, and every create, change and void carries who did it and when. It shows you a quantity, a material and a date, and lets you ask the question.
Pour cards and cube tests
The inspection before the pour, and the cube results that come back after it, kept with the structure they belong to.
Which trade earns, which bleeds
Nothing saves until it says where it belongs. Every order, delivery, bill, stock issue and expense names its project and its work package, or the plant, or shared, before the form accepts it. There is no miscellaneous.
Each writes one row into a single cost ledger, so concrete, blockwork, plaster and fencing carry what they earned against what they cost. When your unit cost passes the rate you tendered, that trade turns red while there is still work left to change.
Rates stay with you
Your surveyor sees codes, descriptions, units and quantities. Your store keeper, foreman and site engineer see no money. Your secretary sees the bills she entered until the PM approves them.
Rates, valuations, subcontractor certificates, costs and margins reach you and that project's PM. They sit in separate tables the database refuses to serve, so it holds for someone who goes round the screens as well as someone who does not. A man is given a role on the sites he works on: your Accra team cannot see your Kumasi job.
See it on your project
If you run construction sites and recognise the problem, get in touch. We will walk you through it with your own bill of quantities, on a call or on site.