What a Bill of Quantities actually costs in Australia in 2026, what drives the price up or down, and how to tell whether a quote is reasonable.
The short answer: for a residential or light commercial project, expect somewhere between $1,800 and $3,500 ex GST for a full Bill of Quantities. Simple projects with good drawings sit at the bottom. Complex or poorly documented ones sit at the top. Larger commercial work runs well beyond that, and it is not unusual for a genuinely complex multi-storey project to attract fees of $10,000 or more.
That range is wide enough to be unhelpful on its own, so here is what actually moves it.
A BOQ fee is essentially measurement hours plus review. A typical residential takeoff is fifteen to twenty-five hours of measurement, plus the time to structure, check and issue it. Anything that increases measurement hours increases the fee, and anything that reduces them reduces it. That is the whole model.
A complete construction certificate set with specifications, a finishes schedule and a window schedule can be measured directly. A set of four architectural sheets with no structural drawings and no specification cannot — every gap becomes an assumption that has to be reasoned, documented and often queried. The same house can differ by 30 per cent in fee purely on documentation quality.
Twelve identical townhouses cost far less than twelve different ones. Measure one unit properly, verify the variations, and the rest multiplies out. If you are pricing a project with genuine repetition, say so when you ask for a quote — it should be reflected in the fee.
Basements, transfer slabs, retaining walls, suspended floors, steel-heavy structures and difficult site levels all add measurement time. A flat-site slab-on-ground house is the cheapest thing in residential construction to measure. A sloping site with a basement garage and a transfer structure is not.
A finishes schedule with two floor coverings and one tile is quick. One with six floor finishes, four tile types and different treatments per room means every space gets measured separately.
Whether hydraulic, mechanical, electrical and fire are measured, and whether drawings for them actually exist, changes both the fee and how much of the project the bill really covers.
A standard five business day turnaround should be priced as standard. If you need it in 48 hours, expect to pay for it — and be suspicious of anyone who agrees to a very short timeframe without asking about drawing quality first.
Some quantity surveyors quote hourly. For a builder this is the worse arrangement, because you carry the risk of the drawings being harder to measure than anyone expected — and you find out at invoice time. A fixed fee moves that risk to the party who can actually assess it. Ask for a fixed fee. If a QS will not quote one after seeing the drawings, that tells you something.
A credible quote does three things: it states a fixed number, it states what is included and excluded, and it names a delivery date. A quote that is just a price with no scope is not a quote — it is a number you will be arguing about later. If someone has quoted without asking to see your drawings, they are guessing.
The honest test is margin. On a $2 million build, a measurement error of two per cent is $40,000 — considerably more than any BOQ fee in this article. The bill does not need to find much to pay for itself, and unlike most professional fees it produces a document you use every week of the job: for subcontractor packages, progress claims and variation arguments.
The other side of that: if you are pricing a $180,000 renovation, a $1,800 bill is a meaningful proportion of the job. A trade breakdown at a lower fee is usually the better fit, and any QS worth engaging will tell you that rather than upsell you.
No. A BOQ measures the work — how much of everything there is. A quote applies rates and margin to produce a price. Builders normally take the measurement and apply their own rates, because their subcontractor pricing is commercially sensitive and specific to them.
It depends on the procurement. On a tendered project the client or their consultant may issue a bill to all tenderers, in which case they pay. Where a builder commissions their own bill to price a job, the builder pays — and that is the most common arrangement for small to mid-sized residential work.
You can get useful quantities, but they carry wider assumptions and should be treated as an early-stage estimate rather than a tender document. Any competent QS will state clearly which items are assumed and where the risk sits.
No meetings, no retainer, no open-ended hourly bills. Email your plans and you'll have an exact price and a delivery date the next business day.
Request a fixed quote