1. How does your service work?

We prepare BOQ and estimates for complete construction projects in residential, commercial, industrial for builders and contractors who don’t have the time or resources to hire a full-time estimator.


2. What information do you give me?

We send a fully detailed BOQ and cost plan with rates included and every trade broken up into individual components, we also measure and price preliminaries and include site management, insurances, site amenities and profit margins.

Although we put on our ‘builders hat’ when pricing tenders we strongly encourage you to review the cost plan prior to submission.


3. If I want to edit the information, can I?

Yes, with every tender we send the excel spreadsheets so you can adjust individual rates or quantities should you wish.


4. Do you price all jobs yourself or is your team overseas?

We price all tenders inhouse by ourselves and rarely use external contractors to price, on the odd occasion we do it would be a highly experienced specialist with suitable experience and based in Australia.


5. How do you determine your fee to estimate?

We review the plans, the size, the complexity, the amount of drawings are some factors which determine our fee.


6. If I send you a set of plans, how long will it take to receive a fee proposal?

We can provide a fee proposal on the same day.


7. Roughly how much is your fee to estimate for a builder?

On average our fee could range from $600 ex GST to $3,000 ex GST, however there are outliers for more complex and simple jobs.


8. Roughly how much is your fee to estimate for a contractor? (painting, concrete, plastering, carpentry etc)

On average our fee could range from $200 ex GST to $900 ex GST, however there are outliers for more complex and simple jobs.


9. How long have you been estimating?

I have been estimating for 11 years, 6 of those years I have operated Accent Estimating pricing jobs daily.


10. Where do you get your rates from?

We draw references from Cordells, Rawlingsons, industry experience and contractor feedback to establish benchmark rates for labour and materials, we have then developed our rates further in the 6 years we have been in business.


11. If you are based in Sydney and my job is in Melbourne, can you still price it?

Yes, 90% of our clients we don’t meet face to face as we price off plans and adjust our rates to suit the location of the project.


12. How do you determine the rates if my job is in a different state?

We have separate rates to suit construction within different states of the country, the factors which determine rates are whether its city / inner city, suburban, regional and the state your project is based in.

Another factor that affects the cost is whether it is a new build, extension, or renovation, in general new builds can be completed more efficiently than an extension and the price reflects this.


13. What’s the lead time to prepare an estimate?

We aim for 1 – 2 weeks to deliver a fully detailed cost plan for builders on average, for trade contractors we aim within 2 – 7 days.


14. If my project isn’t fully specified, how would you know what to allow for?

Prior or during commencement we would email a list of clarifications to determine finishes on flooring, joinery, cladding and typically allow for standard LED downlights and Reece plumbing fixtures unless noted otherwise.


15. Can you send an example of your work, so I know what to expect?

Yes, we can provide an example of a typical layout with our fee proposal.


16. How can I send you the tender documents?

We highly recommend that you create a OneDrive or Dropbox link and upload all your project files onto it (architectural, structural, hydraulic plans and finishes schedules etc) and forward the link. Where that’s not available we have an upload function with a 30mb limit

This will ensure no documents have been missed due to email limits and unforeseen IT issues.


17. I don’t want to pay your estimating fee as I may not win the project, can I pay you as a percentage of profit if we win the job?

No. We aren’t interested in any profit-sharing arrangements.


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