Bill of Quantities (BOQ) Guide 2026 | Saudi Arabia & UAE

A Bill of Quantities is the priced schedule of measured work that turns a design into a tender, a tender into a contract sum, and a contract sum into monthly payments. It is a commercial document before it is a technical one. Most guides to it are written around British measurement practice — NRM2, CESMM — which is useful background and not what governs a project in Riyadh or Dubai. This guide covers what a BOQ contains, which measurement standard actually applies in the Gulf, how the document behaves under a FIDIC-based contract, and where the disputes come from.

What Is a Bill of Quantities?

A Bill of Quantities is a document that itemises the measured work required to complete a construction project, with a description, a unit of measurement, a quantity and a rate against each item. Contractors price it during tender, and the priced document becomes part of the contract.

Its purpose is comparability. When every tenderer prices the same schedule of the same items measured the same way, the client can compare bids on a like-for-like basis rather than on a set of lump sums whose contents nobody can inspect. That single function — making competing prices comparable — is why the document exists, and it explains most of its conventions.

It is prepared by a quantity surveyor or cost consultant from the design drawings and specification, and it is worth being clear at the outset: a BOQ is used mainly on substantial projects. Smaller works and renovations frequently do not need one.

Bill of Quantities vs Bill of Materials vs Quantity Takeoff

Three documents, three purposes, and confusing them is one of the most common causes of budget error on Gulf projects.

The commercial trap is treating the BOQ as a shopping list. A BOQ item reading “supply and fix 200 mm blockwork — 1,850 m²” is a work item whose rate covers blocks, mortar, ties, lintels, labour, plant, waste and profit. Ordering blocks against that 1,850 m² figure under-buys everything else. Our guide to the construction bill of materials covers the procurement side and how one BOQ line expands into several BOM lines.

The Six Sections of a BOQ

A conventional BOQ is not just a table of items. It has a defined structure, and each part does something specific in the tender.

The Types of BOQ

The distinction that carries the most commercial weight is firm versus approximate, because it determines who carries quantity risk. A firm BOQ transfers more of it to the contractor; an approximate BOQ keeps it with the employer and requires re-measurement. Issuing an approximate BOQ and describing it as firm is one of the fastest routes to a claim.

Measurement Standards: NRM2, CESMM and POMI

A BOQ only produces comparable bids if every tenderer measures the same way. That is what a method of measurement is for — it defines what is included in an item, what is measured separately, and how each item is described.

This is where most guidance on the subject stops being useful regionally. Almost every English-language article on BOQs assumes NRM2, because most of them are written for the UK market. On projects in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, POMI is the method commonly encountered — it was written for international use rather than for UK domestic practice, which is precisely why it travelled.

What the choice actually changes:

• What is deemed included in a rate. Different methods draw the line differently on items such as formwork, working space, disposal and finishing. A contractor pricing to one method against a bill measured to another will either overprice or carry unpriced work.
• How items are described. Description rules determine how much detail an item carries, and therefore how much interpretation the contractor has to make.
• What is measured separately. Whether an operation gets its own item or is absorbed into another materially changes the bill’s structure.

Who Prepares the Bill of Quantities

• The quantity surveyor or cost consultant prepares, reviews and finalises the document: analysing drawings and specifications, measuring quantities, structuring the bill into logical sections, applying the method of measurement, and ensuring consistency in descriptions and units.
• The design team provides the drawings, specification and scope, and — critically — resolves vague or incomplete details when the QS raises them. Ambiguity left unresolved at this stage becomes a priced assumption.
• The employer or client approves the bill and provides project-specific requirements.
• The contractor prices it, and in doing so interrogates it. A well-prepared bill produces few tender queries; a poor one produces dozens.

How a Bill of Quantities Is Prepared

1. Confirm the design is sufficiently complete. Firm quantities require complete drawings and a finalised specification. Measuring an incomplete design produces an approximate bill whatever it is labelled.
2. Establish the method of measurement and its edition, and the bill structure — by trade, by element, or by the employer’s required format.
3. Take off quantities from the drawings or the model, discipline by discipline, recording the basis of each measurement.
4. Assign units of measurement consistently — m, m², m³, tonnes, numbers, items — in accordance with the method.
5. Write item descriptions to the description rules, carrying enough specification detail that the item is priceable without guesswork.
6. Structure and sequence the bill into sections that follow the method and the way the work will actually be procured.
7. Add provisional sums and day works where scope is undefined or unmeasurable.
8. Check and issue. Verify totals, cross-check against drawings, confirm no scope is unbilled, and issue with the tender documents.

Note what is not in that list: rates. The consultant’s BOQ is issued unpriced. Rates are inserted by tenderers, which is what makes the document a competitive instrument.

Units and Item Descriptions

Item descriptions are where BOQ disputes originate more often than quantities are.

A quantity is a number that can be checked against a drawing. A description is language, and language admits interpretation. When a description says “excavate” without stating disposal, or “supply and fix” without stating what fixing is included, two contractors price two different scopes and neither is wrong.

Three practices reduce this materially:

• Follow the method’s description rules rather than writing free-form descriptions. That is what the rules exist for.
• Cross-reference the specification clause in the item description, so the technical requirement is unambiguous.
• State what is deemed included where the method leaves discretion, particularly on interfaces between trades.

Re-measurable vs Lump Sum Contracts

The same BOQ behaves completely differently depending on the contract form it sits inside, and this is the distinction most guides omit entirely.

Both forms are used across the Gulf, frequently within the same programme — a lump sum building contract alongside re-measurable enabling works or infrastructure. The error to avoid is assuming which one applies. Read the contract, not the bill.

The Bill of Quantities Under FIDIC-Based Contracts

Most substantial contracts in Saudi Arabia and the UAE are based on a FIDIC form with amended particular conditions. Under those forms the BOQ is not merely a tender document — it stays live through the whole project, and almost no published guidance addresses this.

It is the basis of interim payment

Monthly valuations are built from measured progress against bill items at bill rates. The structure of the bill therefore determines how easy or contentious monthly valuation is. A bill with items that do not map onto how work is actually executed produces monthly arguments about percentage completion.

It is the basis of valuing variations

Where a variation involves work of a similar character executed under similar conditions, bill rates are normally the starting point for valuing it. Where it does not, a new rate is derived — often from bill rates by analogy. Either way, the rates a contractor inserted at tender govern the value of changes years later, which is why rate loading at tender is a recognised commercial behaviour and why abnormally high or low rates attract scrutiny.

It interacts with claims

Preliminaries in particular, being time-related, sit at the centre of prolongation claims. The way they were priced and broken down at tender affects what can be recovered.

The particular conditions govern

Standard FIDIC forms are heavily amended in this region. Measurement provisions, valuation rules, the treatment of quantity variation and the status of the BOQ itself are all commonly modified. Reading the general conditions alone will give you the wrong answer.

Provisional Sums and Day Works

Two sections of the bill that account for a disproportionate share of disputes.

Provisional sums

An allowance included for work that cannot yet be defined or measured — a specialist package not yet designed, a statutory connection whose cost is unknown, or an element still subject to client decision.

The problems arise from three habits:

• Using them to cover incomplete design. A provisional sum is a legitimate device for genuinely undefined work, not a substitute for finishing the drawings. Bills full of provisional sums transfer the cost uncertainty back to the employer while giving the appearance of a priced tender.
• Not defining how they are expended. The contract should state how the work is instructed, how it is valued when it is, and what the contractor is entitled to for overheads and attendance.
• Failing to account for programme. Undefined work has undefined duration, and provisional sums that materialise late can carry time consequences that nobody priced.

Day works

Rates for work carried out on a time-and-materials basis, used where work cannot reasonably be valued by measurement — typically small, unforeseen or highly disrupted operations.

The recurring issue is record-keeping. Day works are only recoverable where labour hours, plant hours and materials were recorded contemporaneously and signed as agreed at the time. Records assembled afterwards are routinely challenged, and usually successfully. Agree the daily record format and the signing authority in the first week of the project, not at the first day works claim.

5D BIM: From Model to Bill of Quantities

Quantities extracted from a coordinated BIM model are faster to produce, update when the design changes, and are traceable back to the element they came from. That is the case for model-based measurement, and it is a strong one.

It also has limits that get glossed over in vendor material:

• The model only counts what is modelled. Temporary works, formwork, working space, disposal, scaffolding and site establishment are almost never in the model, and they are real bill items.
• Model quantities are not measured quantities. A method of measurement has rules about what is deemed included, what is measured net or gross, and what is measured separately. A raw model schedule does not follow those rules; converting it into a compliant bill is skilled work.
• Level of development governs reliability. Quantities from an LOD 200 model are indicative. Tender-grade quantities generally need LOD 300 or better, and procurement-grade needs more. Our guide to BIM levels of development covers what each level supports.
• Classification has to align. For model elements to map onto bill items, the model’s classification must correspond to the bill’s structure — a decision taken at model setup, not at measurement.

Used well, 5D shifts the QS’s effort from measuring to verifying and applying the method — which is the higher-value part of the job. Used naively, it produces a fast bill that does not comply with the method of measurement and cannot be priced consistently.

Where quantities feed the programme rather than the tender, see our guide to construction planning, and for the wider model context, our guide to BIM in construction.

Gulf Pricing Realities

A BOQ is only as sound as the assumptions behind its rates, and several regional factors affect those materially.

• Material price volatility. Steel, cement, copper and aluminium move enough within a project cycle to break a fixed rate. Whether the contract carries a price adjustment or escalation provision changes how a contractor prices, and its absence gets priced as risk.
• Import lead times. Long-lead imported items carry programme risk that shows up in preliminaries and in the rates themselves. Our guide to the bill of materials covers the order-to-site path.
• The working calendar. Summer outdoor work restrictions and reduced Ramadan hours affect productivity for external trades, and productivity assumptions sit inside every rate. A bill priced on a temperate-climate output rate is priced wrong for a third of the year.
• Local content requirements. Where IKTVA or ICV provisions apply, supplier selection is constrained, which can affect achievable rates.
• Authority approval durations, which affect programme and therefore time-related preliminaries.

Seven Bill of Quantities Failures

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

A Bill of Quantities exists to make competing prices comparable, and everything that goes wrong with one traces back to that purpose being undermined: an unnamed method of measurement, a vague item description, an incomplete design measured as though it were finished, or provisional sums standing in for decisions nobody made.

On projects in Saudi Arabia and the UAE there are two further points that international guidance misses. The measurement standard is frequently not the British one most articles assume, and the difference changes what a rate is deemed to include. And under the FIDIC-based forms common here, the bill does not stop working at award — the rates a contractor inserted at tender go on to value variations and interim payments for the life of the project. Name the method, complete the design before you call the bill firm, and write descriptions two estimators would price the same way.