Anybody used a professional QS?

[swisscheese]

A main contractor interested in quoting for the 'whole' of our build, In our area as in most builders/trades are busy and this could have benefits of securing a timeline on a build, albeit with some additional costs involved.

However he would like to use a QS for the tender.  The stated reason being the some of the more 'unusual' elements to the build, you know the not particularly unusual stuff like cladding, UFH/ASHP, solar, ply finishes, partial green roof etc etc.

The kicker is the price the QS will usually charge....1-2% of build cost, and at this stage we don't know if the final quote will even be within our budget, so we could in be in the hole for something like 5K with a QS package that we can't even use.

 

The builder has good refs and has appears to have been involved in some good quality builds.

Anybody used a QS service like this - can a good QS package make savings on the build in the long run.

What are the pros and cons of this kind of thing?

 

 

[Bitpipe]

Very early on in our build, I paid a prospective PM (who specialised in low energy building) to do a full QS costing and PHPP analysis of the project, we were considering using him to manage the build as back then we were looking at ICF, not a TF package.

 

It was a useful exercise, even if the QS estimates were easily 20-30% over what we ended up spending. Definitely gave me a framework to budget against and target prices to beat  - also was used when getting finance from the BS. Helped us make the decision to go for a package TF from MBC and PM it ourselves, as most of the risk was removed with that choice and we could not afford the PM fee anyway.

 

We paid £1800 for both services, which I'm not sure was great value for money but it got us of the blocks.

[gravelld]

I would find the QS yourself and pay for them yourself. Recent podcast on this: http://www.houseplanninghelp.com/hph140-what-is-a-quantity-surveyor-with-jerry-thomas-of-smith-thomas-consult/

[swisscheese]

Thanks Chaps - I'll check out the link.

 

The price seems high to me given that we may not even be able to use the resulting package.  I may have to find some more ball park figures about how QS charge.

[Alex C]

If there are so called unusual items in a build all a QS will do is stick in a very conservative estimate. You are best off getting quotes for the separate parts of the build yourself. I don't see how a QS package can make savings, it will only help with cost certainty. A QS normally is not the person to be getting best prices for stuff, that would be a decent project manager, or yourself.

[PeterW]

You can get a ballpark from plans for about £150 online - just check it carefully and then use it as a benchmark to get pricing for the things you won't consider ... 

 

Its what I did and then built it up as a proper cost book that can also be used to track pricing.