A construction quote needs seven things: your details, a reference and date, sectioned lines each carrying a quantity and a rate, the tender sum with VAT stated, inclusions and exclusions, your assumptions, and the validity period. The template below has all seven already laid out, adds up by itself, and offers 175 standard task descriptions to pick from. Free, no email.
Both are genuine quotes measured from architect's drawings, with the client details removed. Each comes as the client-facing PDF and the full bill of quantities in Excel.
A full-width single-storey rear extension with a flat roof and lantern, a side extension housing a utility room and cloakroom WC, and a new entrance porch — priced to a plastered shell with electrics and plumbing throughout.
99 priced lines · Surrey · measured from the drawings
See the example →A main-roof loft conversion with dormer windows and rooflights plus a rear outrigger extension, priced to a fully-plastered finish with the engineer's beam scheme carried through.
62 priced lines · Surrey · measured from the drawings
See the example →A quote a client can actually check has a measured quantity, a unit and a rate against every line, grouped into sections that add up to the tender sum. It should also state what is excluded and what has been assumed — foundation depth, ground conditions, who supplies what — because those are the things that move the price later. A single lump sum with no breakdown gives a client nothing to compare and gives you nothing to defend when the job changes.
Priced by hand from a full drawing set, a domestic extension typically takes a builder one to three evenings once the take-off is done. Waiting on a quantity surveyor usually means one to three weeks. QuoteWise produces a priced first pass from drawings with a median of about 12 minutes, which you then check and adjust rather than start from a blank page.
Most UK builders quote free for domestic work and absorb the cost, which is why quoting time is one of the biggest unpaid overheads in a small building business. Charging becomes more common where the pricing work is substantial — a full measured bill of quantities on a large refurbishment, or a tender that needs a quantity surveyor's involvement.
A take-off is the measurement stage: reading the drawings and extracting every quantity the job needs — square metres of brickwork, linear metres of skirting, numbers of lintels — before any price is applied. It is the part that takes the longest and the part that determines whether the quote is right, because a rate applied to a wrong quantity produces a confidently wrong number.
The quote is the client-facing document — sections, scope in plain English, and the tender sum. The bill of quantities is the working detail behind it: every measured line with its quantity, unit and rate. Both examples on this page are the same job in both forms, so you can see how one derives from the other.
Working out what to charge for the pricing itself? What a quantity surveyor charges to price a job →
Send the drawings and get the priced bill back. Your first three quotes are free.