Preliminaries for a construction cost plan

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Preliminaries for a construction cost plan

Preliminaries in construction means the unavoidable, fixed costs that arise due to any construction project simply existing.

These include:

Scaffolding

Access is need to the roof and external walls so scaffolding is essential.

This is for health and safety reasons and for simple ease and efficiency of installation.

Site manager

Someone needs to run the site on a day to day basis.

This can be as simple as opening up the site and closing it but someone needs to do it.

Site toilet

All sites need toilets for the workers.

A builder should ensure that their workers never use the Clients bathroom (unless its a tiny job for a handyman etc). So this involves the hiring of a temporary toilet per the week or month.

Site facility

All sites need somewhere for workers to rest, eat and clean-up.

This can be something very simple like a temporary shed that you take down and put up for every new project.

Site fencing

if you fancy keeping hold of your materials and tools then you need to keep the site secure with perimeter fencing. Also, it keeps children from wandering into play and hurting themselves.

Health and safety

The site needs to be clean and well organized and run with health and safety in mind every day.

This includes signage, a vast array of forms, protection, kits and so on.

Cleaning

The site needs to be cleaned daily to keep it organized, clean and safe. The finished property at the end of the project also needs to have a full clean and polish before handover to the Client

Craneage

Some sites are so big that they will need cranes to lift heavy materials from one part of the site to the other.

This may be a necessity for your project.

What is the Preliminaries page for a construction cost plan ?

The Preliminaries page for a construction cost plan is simply the page that lists out all of the tasks that are involved in the Preliminaries package of a construction project.

In a typical construction costs plan there will be separate sections for the following elements (trades/work packages):

Anything else to know about preliminaries ?

A good rule of thumb for preliminaries is that the costs allowed for preliminaries be at least 10-15% of the total construction costs.

Make sure you do not underestimate your preliminaries because if you forget them you still have to expend these costs to finish the project.