What a BoQ actually is.
A Bill of Quantities is the document that tells you what the building is going to cost — not as a round number, but line by line. Cement. Steel. Sand. Ballast. Hardcore. Tiles. Paint. Fittings. Labour. Plant hire. Every item a contractor will purchase or charge you for, listed with a quantity, a unit rate, and a total.
Done properly, a BoQ is the single most useful document in a construction project. It's the contract you hold the contractor to. It's the benchmark you check invoices against. It's the reason you can tell — in week three — whether your project is on budget or not.
What we deliver.
- Full material takeoff from the approved drawings
- Unit rates sourced from current Nairobi market pricing
- Labour costs and plant hire estimates
- Contingency lines, clearly marked
- Priced in KES, with USD equivalent for diaspora clients
- Delivered as a spreadsheet you can edit and re-price
Our fixed-fee guarantee.
Once we issue a BoQ, the price is frozen. If material costs rise more than 15% during construction for reasons within our control — poor timing, poor supplier choice, missed early procurement — Azarea absorbs the difference.
If we're wrong, we pay for being wrong. This is not a marketing promise; it's a clause in our engagement contract. Ask us about it on the call, and we'll send you the wording.
The only exception, stated clearly upfront: county approval fees, statutory charges, and material price changes driven by national market shifts are outside the guarantee. We're accountable for our own judgement, not for the Central Bank of Kenya.
How we price.
We don't guess. Every line item comes from three sources we verify before quoting:
- Current supplier quotes. We call the same suppliers we'll buy from during construction and get written pricing.
- Recent project data. Rates from our own completed projects in Nairobi, Kiambu, and Kajiado.
- Market-wide survey. We cross-check with two or three suppliers per category — cement, steel, aggregates, finishes — to make sure our rates aren't outliers.
The result is a BoQ that a contractor can be held to, and that you can budget against with confidence.
Questions we get asked.
Can I get a BoQ without hiring you for anything else?
Yes. BoQ preparation is available standalone. Many clients come to us only for a cost check on drawings already produced by another firm.
What if my contractor's quote is much higher than your BoQ?
That's usually the point of getting a BoQ. It gives you a benchmark. If the contractor's quote is 30% above our estimate, you know it — and you can walk into that conversation with data instead of a suspicion. In most cases, contractors sharpen their quotes when a client has a third-party BoQ.
Do you source the materials too?
Yes — that's our open-book procurement service. We buy the materials at trade prices, pay suppliers directly, and send you the receipt within 48 hours of every purchase. The savings we negotiate go to you, not us.