Take off steel, roads, rebar and bolts.

Why these four, and why rebuild them

Steel, reinforcement and bolts are billed by mass, and roads by volume and area. All four are measured by multiplying a dimension by a unit mass or another dimension, thousands of times over. That repetition is where spreadsheets go wrong quietly. The four contractor templates behind this pack were in daily use, and every one of them carried an error that changed a tonnage or a total:

• the steel takeoff could never total eight of its thirteen classes;
• the road measure had no grand total, and its cut volumes were typed in, so they never moved;
• the rebar calculator gave R14 the mass of R16 and linked most of its size totals to the wrong column;
• the bolt calculator ignored the number of nuts and washers on every size except M6.

Each calculator page lists exactly what was fixed. Every quantity is now a live formula. Bar and barrel masses are worked out from the diameter at 7 850 kg/m³ rather than typed in, and each workbook says which measuring standard it follows and how far that reference was checked.

Measure to the document your contract names

South African work is measured under different documents depending on who lets the contract. Building work follows the ASAQS Standard System of Measuring Building Work (7th edition, 2015). Steelwork bills often follow the SAISC rules in the Purple Book. SANRAL road work has used the COTO 2020 specifications since March 2021, while many municipal contracts still name COLTO 1998 or the SANS 1200 parts. The measuring standards guide sets out which applies when, and what each one does and does not say.

Planning-stage quantities, not a final account. Check every quantity against the drawings.

Reviewed by Aidan Koetaan MBA PMP, quantity surveyor and construction project manager.