One carpenter fits a fire door in two hours, another takes four. One bricklayer lays 600 bricks a day, another lays 450. None of that is necessarily a quality issue — it can simply be different specs, different materials, different access. The rates we use have to reflect the actual production of the team running the job.

We spend time with builder clients early in our relationship learning their typical productivity. Once we have it, the take-offs we produce price what they’ll actually do, not what a textbook says they should do.

Builders who switch to a QS without that calibration step usually find the first few jobs feel ‘wrong.’ It’s worth getting the calibration right at the start.