Free BOQ Template for Building Construction (Excel)

What's in the BOQ template

One Excel sheet with the standard BOQ columns, eleven house sections in build order, live formulas for rate, amount and section totals, and a summary that adds overhead, provisional sums, contingency and tax.

• Columns: Ref, Description, Unit, Qty, Material rate, Labour rate, Rate (material + labour), Amount (qty × rate) and Notes.
• Sections: Preliminaries, Substructure, Frame and upper floors, Roof, Stairs, External walls, Windows and external doors, Internal walls and doors, Internal finishes, Services, External works.
• Summary: each section total, overhead and profit (%), provisional sums for fees and utility connections, a prime cost sum, contingency (%) and tax (%).
• Shaded cells are the ones you fill. Everything else calculates, so add or delete rows inside a section and the totals still hold.

How to prepare a BOQ in Excel

Measure each item from the drawings, enter the quantity and unit, price it with a material and a labour rate, and let each section total carry to the summary, where you add overhead, provisional sums, contingency and tax.

1. Fill in the project details and choose your currency before you download.
2. Take off quantities from the drawings, section by section, using one method of measurement. Measure net: wall area less openings, for example.
3. Enter a material rate and a labour rate per unit from supplier and subcontractor quotes. The template adds them and works out the amount.
4. Add provisional sums for work you can’t describe yet and prime cost sums for items not chosen yet, such as kitchen units.
5. Set overhead, contingency and tax percentages in the summary. The total updates as you go.

Our guide to quantity takeoff and unit costs works through a foundation example step by step.

Standard BOQ format

A bill of quantities lists each item of work with a reference, a description, a unit, a quantity, a rate and an amount, grouped into sections whose totals carry to a summary.

A full bill also has preliminaries (the contractor’s site-wide costs such as set-up, supervision and insurance), provisional and prime cost sums, daywork rates for unmeasured work, and a summary (BOQ format conventions).

BOQ sections for a house, in build order

The template follows the element groups of the RICS cost-planning standard NRM1, read in the order a house is built: preliminaries, substructure, frame and upper floors, roof, stairs, external walls, windows and external doors, internal walls and doors, finishes, services and external works. Contractors sometimes order a bill by trade instead (excavation, concrete, masonry and so on) to match subcontract packages; element order is easier to follow for a house.

Example: bill of quantities for a 3-bedroom house

The example workbook has quantities for a single-storey three-bedroom house of 110 m², worked out from the assumptions below so you can follow every figure. Add your own rates.

Assumptions: 11.0 × 10.0 m single-storey footprint (110 m² gross floor area); 230 mm masonry external walls, 3.0 m storey height, 42 m external perimeter; about 20 m of internal load-bearing walls and 35 m of partitions; 600 × 300 mm strip footings in trenches 900 mm deep; 100 mm ground slab on 150 mm hardcore; pitched roof at 30° with 0.5 m overhangs; 8 windows of 1.2 × 1.2 m and 2 of 0.6 × 0.6 m; 2 external and 7 internal doors; 2 bathrooms.

Illustrative only, not taken from a real drawing: measure your own design. Rates are left blank because prices vary too much by country to quote one; the construction cost estimator has sourced default rates for eight countries.

BOQ vs bill of materials vs cost estimate

A BOQ measures the work so contractors can price it; a bill of materials lists the materials to buy; a cost estimate is an early approximation from floor area or elemental rates before the design is detailed.

Sources: Designing Buildings, bills of quantity, bill of quantities v schedule of rates, CivilQuants, BOQ vs BOM.

Measurement standards for a BOQ by country

Quantities in a formal BOQ are measured to a published standard so every tenderer prices the same thing: NRM2 for building work in the UK, CESMM4 for civil engineering, IS 1200 in India and the ASAQS system in South Africa.

On a small house you don’t need the full rules, but measure consistently: net quantities, one unit per item, and openings deducted from wall areas.

Who prepares a bill of quantities?

Usually the client's quantity surveyor; on small houses the architect, engineer or builder often prepares a simpler one, and contractors price it.

RICS lists preparing bills of quantities under NRM2 as a standard quantity surveying service (RICS quantity surveyor services). Once the job is won, the priced BOQ becomes the budget: in Aaghaz360 you can track spend against it phase by phase.