The tender invitation is in, the drawings are sat in your inbox, and the return date is closer than you'd like. You know roughly what the job's worth. What you don't have is the time to measure it properly and price every line. That's the gap estimating services for contractors are meant to fill. Before you send anything out, though, it helps to know exactly what comes back and where it slots into your own process.
What estimating services for contractors actually cover
At its simplest, you send drawings and get a priced estimate back. But "estimate" means different things to different firms, and that's where contractors get caught out.
A proper service measures the job and then prices it. The measuring is the part that eats the hours: every element taken off the drawings, quantity by quantity, to NRM2. The pricing turns those quantities into a cost, using current rates for materials, labour and plant in the area the job is in.
What you shouldn't get is a single figure with a paragraph of text under it. A number you can't break down is a number you can't defend, and it's no help when a client asks why the external works look high.
It also matters who does the measuring. An estimator who takes off the job end to end sees how the pieces connect: the foundation depth that changes the drainage, the roof pitch that changes the scaffold. Split the job between people who never look at the whole set and those links get lost.
What you get back, section by section
Here's what a measured, priced estimate should contain when it lands in the client portal:
- Measured quantities for each element: groundworks, substructure, frame, envelope, roof, internal finishes, services allowances, external works.
- Rates and extended costs against each line, so you can see how every total was reached.
- A summary by element or stage, which is usually what you'll lift into the tender return.
- Preliminaries set out on their own, not hidden inside the rates.
- Provisional and PC sums where the design isn't finished, clearly labelled.
- Assumptions and exclusions, so you know what the price does and doesn't cover.
That last item matters more than people expect. Most arguments about a price are really arguments about scope. When the exclusions are written down at tender stage, you've got something to point to later.
To see what this looks like on a real job, there's a sample estimate you can scroll through with every section laid out. We also walk through what you actually get back when a job is priced in a separate post.
How it fits your tender process
An outside estimate shouldn't replace your tender process. It should sit inside it.
Before you send the drawings
Read the tender documents yourself first. You know which parts you'll subcontract, which trades you've already got prices from and where the client has been vague. Pass that on. It saves measuring work you've already priced, and it flags the risky bits early.
While it's being priced
Keep your subcontract enquiries going in parallel. The measured quantities help here too: send the same figures to each subbie and their quotes become comparable.
If a revision lands mid-tender, send it straight over rather than sitting on it. Adjusting a measure part way through is far easier than reworking a finished estimate the night before the return.
When it comes back
Check it. Pick a handful of lines and trace them to the drawings. Read the assumptions against the tender documents. Then do the part only you can do: add your margin, weigh the risk, settle the programme, and adjust for anything you know about the client or the site that isn't on the drawings.
That division of work is the whole point. The contractor estimating service does the measuring and the cost build-up. You make the commercial calls. For the rest of what goes into a return, our guide on what's actually in a tender submission covers the other parts and where the risk sits.
Estimating for building contractors of different sizes
Estimating services for contractors aren't used the same way by everyone. A large main contractor and a two-person building firm want different things from the same service.
Bigger firms tend to use it for capacity. They have estimators, just not enough of them when invitations bunch up, so they send out the measure and keep the adjudication in house. Smaller building contractors often have nobody whose job is estimating at all. The director prices at night after a day on site, and an outside estimate is what makes bidding for the job possible in the first place.
Mid-sized firms sit somewhere in between. They might have one estimator who is good but overloaded, and bring in outside help for jobs outside their usual type of work, or in a region where they don't know the local rates well.
Either way, the output is the same: measured quantities and a priced breakdown built to NRM2. What changes is how much of it you rework yourself before it goes out.
What to ask before you choose a service
A few questions sort the useful providers from the rest quickly.
Do they measure from your drawings, or apply a rate per square metre? A cost per square metre is fine for a feasibility figure. It isn't a tender price. Are the rates current and local to the job, or a national average? Is the fee fixed and agreed before work starts, or charged by the hour? Can they hit your return date? And will they show you the workings, line by line, so you can check them?
With MPE the answers are plain. Every element is measured off your drawings to NRM2 and priced on current UK rates for that location, the fee is fixed and agreed up front, and the estimate is delivered to your tender deadline, wherever in the UK the job is. The page on our construction estimating services UK contractors use sets out the full service.
Whoever you go with, the test doesn't change. When the estimate comes back, you should be able to stand behind every line of it.