Quantity surveying software for the people who have to defend the number
A quantity surveyor's output is a number that somebody will later dispute. Everything about the job — the take-off, the rate build-up, the variation, the valuation — exists so that the number can be defended six months after it was produced. Spreadsheets are excellent at producing numbers and terrible at remembering why.
What the QS desk has to hold
- 01Take-off that can be checked, not just totalled
- 02Rate build-ups that show labour, material, plant and margin separately
- 03A rate library that survives the project it was built on
- 04Tender pricing with the assumptions attached
- 05Variations measured against the original bill, with the delta visible
- 06Valuation of work in place, tied to what the site actually reported
- 07A history, so the number can be explained a year later
The variation is where the record earns its keep
A variation is an argument in advance. If the original bill, the instruction, the measurement and the rate build-up are four documents in three places, the argument is won by whoever kept better files. If they are one record, the argument is short.
Measurement against what the site said
Valuation usually happens twice: the site says what it built, the QS measures what can be certified, and the two are reconciled in a meeting. When the site report and the bill are the same system, that reconciliation starts from an agreed set of facts instead of two competing ones. See the daily site report that actually protects you.
For consultants as well as contractors
QS practices measuring on behalf of a client need the same desk as a contractor's commercial team, pointed the other way. Ofivio Planning & QS is sold as its own product for that reason — you do not have to buy a contractor's box to get a surveyor's tools.
Final accounts are where the year is won or lost
Tendering gets the attention because it is the visible part of the job. The final account is where the money actually settles, and it settles from records made twelve to thirty months earlier by people who have since moved on. A surveyor who can produce the original bill line, the instruction that changed it, the measurement taken at the time and the rate build-up behind it is not negotiating — they are reading. Everyone else is negotiating.
What this does not do, said plainly
- No on-screen take-off from drawings or PDFs — measurement is entered or imported
- No quantity extraction from a BIM model
- No shipped template for every published standard method of measurement
- No benchmarking database of market rates; the library is yours, built from your own work
Who this is not for
If you are on this list, Ofivio is the wrong purchase and we would rather you know now than in month three.
- Model-based automatic quantity extraction from BIM
- Firms working solely to a method of measurement we do not ship templates for
- Cost consultants who only need a benchmarking database
- Single-project estimators who price two jobs a year
The products behind this
Questions people actually ask
Can a consultant QS use it without the construction product?
Does it price a tender?
How are variations handled?
Keep reading
Open a workspace and try it on your own work
A free trial with your own projects in it tells you more in an afternoon than any comparison table. Nothing is charged during the trial.