BOQ Rate Analysis & Bid Margin Optimizer

About the BOQ Rate Analysis & Bid Margin Optimizer

Price a tender’s bill of quantities the way a rate analysis does, for every item at once. Add the BOQ — the e-procurement price schedule (the “BoQ” workbook of CPPP and state portals), a CPWD-style schedule of quantities or your own costing sheet — and each item’s rate is built from its materials, labour, machinery and carriage, with wastage, water charges, your overheads, a contingency, the cost of money until you are paid, a share of the lump sums (mobilisation, site office, insurance) and your profit, after the deductions taken from every bill, and GST where you quote with it.

The items are costed from their estimated rate (a CPWD schedule rate less the 1% water charges and 15% profit and overheads it carries, times your cost index), from the cost columns of your own sheet, from costs you type, or from a rate analysis of materials, labour and machinery at your own rates, with templates that carry the quantities of the CPWD Analysis of Rates for Delhi, Volume 1 for common items. Then you see the break-even, minimum profitable (walk-away) and target quotations against the estimate, the profit and margin at any bid — a percentage above or below the estimate, a total or the rates in your file — a bid ladder, the totals by section, where the money goes and what dearer materials, labour or machinery would do to your margin.

Without a pass the result is a free preview: every count and total, the quotations and the margin at your bid in full, and the first rows of each table; the full item rates, the priced BOQ and rate analysis in Excel, the PDF bid-pricing report, the CSV and the copied rates come with a Premium pass. Your bill, your rate library and your projects stay in this browser.

Common uses

• Contractors pricing a percentage-rate tender: how far below the estimate they can go.
• Filling the rate column of an item-rate BOQ from a cost build-up, with rates that add up to the bid.
• Checking which items are priced far below or above the estimate before submitting.
• Estimators keeping a rate library and projects in the browser and handing the priced BOQ to a partner as Excel or PDF.

How each rate is built up

• A = materials (with wastage when you cost them yourself) + labour + machinery + carriage + other, for the quantity analysed
• B = A + water charges (A × water %; the CPWD analyses add 1%)
• C = B + overheads + contingency + cost of money, each B × its %; the cost of money is your cost of funds × the months your money is in the work ÷ 12
• C′ = C + the item’s share of the lump sums, in proportion to C
• Price of the bill = total cost × (1 + profit % ÷ 100) ÷ (1 − deductions %) for a profit on cost, or total cost ÷ (1 − deductions % − margin %) for a margin on the price
• Rate = C′ × price ÷ total cost, rounded to the paisa, 5 paise (CPWD’s “Say”), the rupee or ₹10; walk-away rates are rounded up so they never add up to less than the walk-away

The CPWD analyses add 15% for the contractor’s profit and overheads (CPOH) on B (CPWD Analysis of Rates for Delhi, Volume 1); setting overheads at 15% and the rest at 0 reproduces their rates exactly.

Costing from the estimated rate

A CPWD schedule rate already includes 1% water charges and 15% profit and overheads, so the schedule’s direct cost of an item is its rate ÷ 1.01 ÷ 1.15. Your cost index scales it to your own cost: 100% if you work at the schedule’s cost, 92% if your materials, labour and machinery cost 8% less. The direct cost is split into materials, labour, machinery, carriage and other by the composition you set, for the breakdown and the “if costs rise” view. Untick “The estimated rates include water charges and profit and overheads” for an estimate built without them, and tick GST when the estimated rates include it.

Rate analysis and the rate library

The templates carry the quantities of materials, carriage, labour and machinery that the CPWD Analysis of Rates for Delhi, Volume 1 gives for earthwork in foundation trenches, cement mortar 1:6, cement concrete 1:2:4, 1:3:6 and 1:4:8, RCC 1:1.5:3, TMT reinforcement and brick work in cement mortar 1:6 — without any of its prices. Your rate library supplies the rates, in the units you buy in: cement per bag, sand per cum or brass, bars per kg, bricks per thousand. A template for 10 cum or one quintal covers that much of the item: steel billed by the kilogram gets the analysis of a quintal for 100 kg. Analyses differ between editions, schedules and methods (machine mixing, ready-mixed concrete), so check the quantities against the analysis your contract uses; every line can be changed.

Break-even, walk-away and target

• Break-even quotation: the price at which the bill earns nothing after its deductions.
• Minimum profitable quotation (walk-away): the price that keeps your minimum profit; below it, bidding means taking less than you decided you need.
• Target quotation: the price with your target profit.
• Your bid: a percentage above or below the estimate (a percentage-rate tender), a total, or the rates you have filled in the file (an item-rate tender), with its profit, margin and verdict.

The bid ladder lists the bids in 2.5% steps around the estimate with these prices among them.

Files it reads

• The e-procurement price schedule of CPPP and state portals: rows about the tender, a row of data types, the header (“Sl. No., Item Description, Quantity, Units, Estimated Rate…”), a row of column numbers, sub-head headings and items.
• A CPWD-style schedule of quantities: sub-heads, main descriptions continued by sub-items (“(a) All kinds of soil”), quantities, units, rates and amounts.
• Your own costing sheet with material, labour, machinery and carriage columns.

CSV (with or without a byte-order mark, quoted fields with commas), TSV, Excel (xlsx, xls) and ODS, up to 50,000 rows a sheet. Amounts may carry ₹, Rs. or INR, a closing “/-” and Indian digit grouping (1,23,456.78); units such as cum, cu.m, sqm, Rmt, kg, MT, quintal, Nos and LS are recognised, also beside the quantity (“250 cum”). Total, carried-over and amount-in-words rows and GST columns are left out.

Limitations

• The rates are yours: nothing is looked up, and the tool does not know market prices or other bidders’ rates.
• The templates hold the CPWD Delhi analysis quantities for a few common items; other schedules, methods and sites need other quantities.
• It does not fill the tender portal’s own BOQ file for upload: copy the rates into it, or use the priced BOQ to check yours.
• Securities, BOCW-type cess, TDS and GST rules differ by contract and state: set the deductions and GST your contract states.
• At most 50,000 items are read from one sheet.
• An estimate to price a bid with, not financial or tax advice.

Privacy

On this device; its files download once

Your bill is read in your browser, in a background worker, and never uploaded. Your settings, rate library, column matches and the projects you keep stay in this browser’s storage until you remove them.