Bill of quantities software: which stage of the BOQ you need it for

01Which stage of the BOQ are you at?

02Can the BOQ come straight from the drawings?

• QTO reads DWG, DXF and PDF drawings; quantities come from the layer name, following a naming convention, and a template drawing with the layers already set up is provided
• The scale is derived from the drawing grid, bay by bay — a sheet whose grid does not close is rejected rather than measured, and a drawing that declares no units is counted but not measured
• Every reading is marked on the drawing, so the engineer reviews what was measured, not a list of numbers; a correction keeps the value read, the value used and the reason
• On a villa project its totals matched an independently produced manual takeoff to three decimals — footing concrete 139.167, column concrete 36.096

03In Arabic, in English, or both?

Both. QTO's three workbooks — takeoff, bill of quantities and priced bill of quantities — are generated at the moment of download from the live figures, and the language is chosen at download: the same project can go to the consultant in English and to the site in Arabic on the same day. A correction appears in the next download without regenerating anything.

In MEMAR and Revora every screen switches between Arabic and English.

04We already have the BOQ in Excel. Do we retype it?

No. Revora construction imports the bill of quantities from Excel through a review that shows what is new, what changed in quantity or in rate, and what is locked — so a revised BOQ from the consultant is read as a list of differences, not pasted over the old one.

05What happens to the BOQ item after the contract is signed?

• Each item gets its schedule, with planned and actual dates and the delay in days
• Payment certificates are written per item: the submitted quantity, the technical office review, then approval with the approved quantity
• The approved quantity locks onto the item, so the next certificate starts from what is left of it, not from the claim
• Each certificate calculates its gross, retention, advance recovery, tax and net, and is paid from a treasury with its accounting entry — refused when the treasury cannot cover it
• Measured progress on site becomes the real percentage for the phase and the project

More on the certificate itself: see the payment certificates page.

06What does a BOQ in a spreadsheet not do?

• A quantity corrected on the drawing does not reach the priced workbook until someone retypes it
• A quantity cut in this month's certificate does not travel back to the item, so next month is claimed against the original quantity again
• The certified value and the accounting entry live in two files, so the contractor's outstanding balance depends on which file is open

07Who builds it, and how do I see it?

mbsystems, a software company founded in 2013 in Vienna, Austria, with offices in Vienna, Cairo and Muscat. We write these systems ourselves rather than reselling somebody else's.

Ask for a demonstration on one of your own drawings or your own bill of quantities: info@mbsyss.com, or Cairo +20 100 520 5900, Muscat +968 7277 7269, Vienna +43 681 8411 0547. The price is given as a quote for your company.