Assignment #1 – Bill of Quantity take off:
A developer who is a long standing client of your project consultancy company, Ace Projects Pty Ltd, has requested that your company prepare a Bill Of Quantities (BofQ) for their proposed warehouse and office project. The developer will use the BofQ to seek a price from a builder and then use that price in an application for bank finance for the project.
Your manager has asked you to prepare a report, a BofQ table and the supporting calculations for her review before submitting them to the client. You are new to the company and quantity takeoffs are often the first sort of work given to new engineers, so you want to make a good impression.
The developer has provided drawings and the following specification and now requires a BofQ quantity take-off for the building works to ‘lock up’ stage. Lock Up stage includes earthworks, foundations, concrete slabs and carparks, steelwork, precast concrete walls and roof cladding. The following items are to be treated as single line Prime Cost (PC) items in the BofQ (so you can measure each as -1 lot-, or for roofing, the total area):
• storm water piping from floor level to the boundary drains,
• 240 volt electrical and data from boundary connection to distribution board in office on common wall with warehouse.
• Roofing including metal deck, flashing, gutters and down pipes to ground level.
• plumbing to amenities,
• Amenities, fixtures, lights, power and tiling.
The finishing trades, painting and office fitout are not included and will be done later by the company that will lease the premises.
Your company is keen to prepare a professional BofQ for this valued client. The developer has indicated that the division of work in the BofQ should be as follows:
• Preliminaries, site establishment and demobilisation
• Site preparation & setout including clearing, topsoil excavation and cartage to disposal.
• Warehouse building, truck parking apron and driveway crossover
• Office building, and carpark.
You have visited the site and made the following notes:
• Site slopes from rear to front (east to west) and is covered by scrubby bushes and rubbish (estimated at about 18 m3). Topsoil (150mm deep) is to be excavated from the whole site area, some to be stockpiled for reuse in landscape areas, and the remainder carted to the Local Council depot.
• Sections of the 1500 wide x 100 thick concrete footpaths to be removed for driveway crossovers where indicated on the drawings.
• Site establishment will require temporary amenities (Toilets etc.), a site office and change /crib room with temporary power, water and sewer connections. Footpath protection at vehicle entry and temporary fencing to the full site perimeter. The site office will need 75mm of of crushed rock hard standing and a crossover timber protection for the footpath.
• The truck parking apron and carpark crossover areas will require 75mm hardstanding during construction to allow easy construction access from the street. This will allow the new cross overs to be built after building erection so they won’t be damaged by construction traffic.
Specification for this tender:
This specification is for the construction to lockup stage of a steel frame warehouse and office building with precast concrete walls, and carparks. The works include demolition of existing structures and paving, earthworks and drainage (with sewer, stormwater and conduits for electrical), reinforced concrete floor slab to warehouse and office, concrete apron and car park. Steel portal frame, precast concrete walls to warehouse and office and manually operated roller shutter door to warehouse entry. Metal deck roof including purlins, gutters and down pipes connnected at floor level to storm water drains.
With the exception of the toilet amenities, services above the top of the concrete floor, internal works and finishing trades will be by others.
Specification Details:
• Clear existing vegetation & rubbish from site and cart to spoil.
• Survey and set out the site works.
• Demolish and remove existing buildings & paving.
• Excavate and remove 150mm of topsoil from the whole site and deliver clean fill to Council depot.
• Excavate natural ground (sandy clay) material on site uniformly under warehouse, office and carparks to underside of crushed rock base course.
• Cart excavated material to spoil.
• Compact exposed sandy clay subgrade to 95% modified ASSHO with smooth vibrating steel roller.
• Supply and install water supply, sewer and underground electrical and stormwater to detail.
• Supply, install and compact to 200 mm depth size 20 mm fine crushed rock to underside of all concrete slabs.
• Supply and install 30 Mpa concrete footings, floor slabs, car parks and driveway crossovers.
• Supply and install steelwork for purlins, portal frames and associated bracing to warehouse.
• Supply and install 150mm Precast Concrete wall panels to Warehouse and 125mm panels to Office.
• Supply and install steelwork for purlins, portal frames and associated bracing to office.
• Supply and install roof sheeting, purlins, gutters, flashing and downpipes to warehouse and office.
• Supply and install manually powered roller shutter door to warehouse.
• Supply and install Aluminium framed windows and entrance door glazing to office.
• Supply and install timber stud walls, doors and tiling to toilet amenities and passage areas.
• Supply and install toilet cubicle partitions, WC’s, urinals, basins, tapware, mirrors and all plumbing pipe and fittings for connection and operation of the toilets. Note: not including office partitions and fitout which is by the new tenant.
Drawings:
Drawing No. Title Issue Revision
A15001 Plan Tender 0
A15002 Roof Plan Tender 0
A15003 Elevations & Sections Tender 0
C15001 Footings & Floor Slabs Tender 0
C15002 Roof Framing Plan Tender 0
C15003 Drainage & Services Plan Tender 0
C15004 Footing Details Tender 0
S15001 Existing Conditions Tender 0
Purpose and Methodology of the Quantity Take-off
The purpose of this quantity take-off is to measure quantities for a Bill of Quantities (BofQ) that will be suitable to obtain consistent subcontract prices for the various sections of the works. The BofQ also enables progress payments to be made for listed work that has been completed.
The purpose of this assignment is to:
• Gain an understanding of the items to be measured and catalogue them in a systematic and comprehensive manner, in accordance with AS1181-1982 ‘Method of measurement of civil engineering works and associated building works’.
• Ensure all aspects of the scope of works for the project are included in the take-off.
• Gain an awareness of the level of detail required to accurately estimate the extent of works to build the project
The following quantities will be aggregated in the Bill od Quantities for the purpose of obtaining subcontractor prices:
• The company has reliable subcontractors who quote concrete quantities as an all up cost per cubic meter including formwork and reinforcing steel (rebar). The description you develop for the line item should make it clear that formwork and rebar are included. You will not be required to measure these separately.
• The calculated weight of each item of Structural steelwork will include all necessary fabrications (structural profiles, plates, cleats etc.) that form part of the item being measured
• The area of roof plumbing to be measured shall cover the whole area of the roof and be described to include roof sheeting, flashings, gutters and downpipes. You do not need to measure gutters, flashings or downpipes separately for this assignment.
Hint: As a guide in the preparation of this quantity take-off you should expect to measure less than 50 various quantity items grouped under some 7 or so category sub headings. This can be quite time consuming, so make sure you make an early start on this assignment.
ASSIGNMENT #1 SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
1. Presentation of your Assignment submission
This assignment is to be submitted on Canvas, Assignment #1, as a PDF print with an assignment cover sheet followed by a one page report, the BofQ, and also the supporting excel files. (Refer to Canvas for the form of assignment cover sheet).
2. Report.
The report is to be less than one page of writing, and should be a professional communication addressed to the client. The report should identify; the context of who produced the report; a footer as described in your face sheet instructions on Canvas; the project title and summary; a listing of any qualifications or discrepancies in the specifications; and possible specific project risks based on the specification supplied. The BofQ and excel supporting calculations, are to follow the assignment face sheet and report.
3. Quantity Take-off and Australian Standard for Measurement of Civil Works
You are to measure the quantities for the items listed in the drawings and described in “Assignment #1 – Bill of Quantity take-off”
Your Bill of Quantities will have the following header on each page:-
Item Description Quantity Unit Rate Amount

Assignment #1 requires a quantity take-off which is a measure of quantities & units only (Except for PC items and firm quotations as detailed above). The ‘Rate’ and ‘Amount’ columns will remain blank, to be calculated at another time.
The description of each item in the Bill of Quantities list is required to be in the form of a brief description that includes a clear explanation of the task in the form of ‘noun and verb’ for the measured items.
e.g. ‘Supply and install 150mm precast concrete panel…etc.(with other information identifiers such as location and/or details specific to that particular item etc.)
Refer to Australian Standard AS1181-1982 ‘Method of measurement of civil engineering works and associated building works’ for the rules about how to do a quantity take off. Sample extracts from the standard are also supplied in these instructions for your initial reference.
Note that this standard has a 'withdrawn' status, but is nevertheless an excellent practical guide on the principles to follow for professional measurement of engineering quantities.
Students will need to refer to the whole standard available from the Swinburne Library web page; select Databases/Standards/Australian Standards/Powersearch/All and search on “AS 1181”. For more detailed instructions see: AS1181_Techstreet Standard access.pdf in your assignment files.
Note: There is a limit of four users logged on at any one time to the Standards Australia website. If you download the AS1181 .pdf file and save it to flash drive it will remain readable for 48 hours. If you copy the .pdf file and paste it to a Word document the format will be poor and you are required by Copyright Law to limit that content to a maximum of 10% of the document. The best approach is to print out the Standard in notebook form (2 to a page and double sided) for your ongoing reference.
You are to prepare the materials take-off measurement in the above BofQ format. The calculations are to be in an ‘Excel’ spreadsheet model with quantities referenced to the ‘Quantity’ column for the appropriate items in the Bill of Quantities.
Print out your Bill of Quantities results and report to a PDF file and submit your calculation spread sheets and submit as excel files. All calculations must be done on the spreadsheet. Hand sketches, where needed, should be scanned and inserted as a JPEG picture in the Excel spread sheet.
Where an item is not fully detailed on the drawings you are expected to estimate by scaling off the drawing and/or assuming a sensible value.
The spreadsheet file names that you create for this assignment must have your student ID number included in the file name.
4. Tips for setting up the Bill of Quantities:
The AS1181 standard gives you the sequence for listing the trades in the Bill of Quantities (BofQ), the units and what goes where. It also indicates what should be measured and how to group various types of work.
The standard is 53 pages and you will need to be selective about the degree of detail that you use. In this instance, i.e. for this assignment you just need to measure the concrete. You do not need separately measure the formework or rebar, so find the sections and part(s) that you need.
To save confusion, set out your calculations in the quantities calculations spread sheets in the same sequence as you intend the BofQ to appear. Setup your ‘Excel’ spreadsheet targetting the calculation results (with relative and absolute cell addresses) to the BofQ table so that if you change a quantity the result automatically adjusts in the BofQ. This makes it less likely for you to make a mistake, than if you transfer the numbers manually.
As the first step, set out the headings, sub-headings and line descriptions of the BofQ using AS1181 (and information herein) as a guide and then use this as the template for your calculation sheet.
Group like tasks under suitable subheadings in the BofQ so that those sections of the BofQ can be used to obtain subcontractor prices for their area of work e.g. all steelwork grouped under ’Structural Steel’.
Some general instructions from Section 1.3 of AS1181, page 5-7, “General Principles”
AS1181 Ref. Simplified description, paraphrased (Not complete; check AS1181 for yourself!)
1.3.3 (a) Put minor items with major in the description e.g. ‘Supply & Install door complete with door furniture’
1.3.3 (b) Put similar items together… i.e. where the cost (labour & material) are related and the unit of measure is the same then include them in the same line item.
1.3.3 (i) Fixed duration tasks or fixed cost items are always kept separate from quantity based items.
1.3.3 (ii) Components built together should be grouped together. i.e. try to measure a task (line item) the the way you would build it.
1.3.3 (iii) Divide the project into its major subdivisions and then by trade or subcontract within each subdivision, e.g. Excavation: Cut, Fill, Cartage to spoil etc.
1.3.4 Where location is significant group minor trades together under one heading.
1.3.3 (iv) Subtotal quantities that are built in different locations or stages of construction
1.3.8 Dimensions always Length x Width x Height.
1.3.9
Table 1.1 Rounding UP rules for quantities 10 & 10 & units m, m2, m3, t Significant figures in the BofQ line items and totals
5. Date, Time and Location for Assignment Submission
The assignment is to be submitted in electronic format by the due date.
• Electronic copy to be submited via the ‘Assignment‘ section on Canvas before the closing time.
Note:
1. This assignment is to be all your own work. Refer to the Unit Outline for this subject and student notices on Canvas regarding plagiarism and unfair advantange. In particular, if you copy another students work (or use it as a 'template'), or if you allow another student to copy your work, even with modifications, then both of you risk being penalised by loosing some or all of your marks in addition to other consequences listed elsewhere.
2. The quality of the work that you produce is important and setout and logical presentation of this assignment will be marked.
3. The PDF print file in the electronic submission must be set up ready to print. You will be marked on both the PDF print file and the excel files.
Marking schedule for this assignment:
Attribute % Score
Set out & presentation - incl. Headers, Footers 6% 1
Report including issues and risks 19% 3
Grouping, Units & rounding to AS 1181 19% 3
Group and item descriptions 19% 3
Quantity Take-off Values & detailed calcs 38% 6

Total 100% 16