Construction Glossary
Preliminaries
Also known as Prelims
Definition
Preliminaries are the costs of running a site that are not tied to any single item of work. They include things like site management, welfare, scaffolding, plant hire, fencing, skips, insurance and temporary services. Prelims are usually shown as a separate section in a bill of quantities. They are real costs that must be priced or you lose them from your margin.
Preliminaries cover the general setup and running of a job rather than the bricks and mortar. Typical items are the site manager's time, site cabins and welfare, scaffolding, temporary fencing, power and water, waste removal, and project insurances.
They are often expressed partly as fixed costs and partly as time-related costs, because some prelims rise the longer the job runs. That is why programme length matters so much to the prelim total.
Why it matters
Builders lose money when they forget to price prelims or underestimate how long the job will take. These costs run every week whether work is productive or not, so if the programme slips your prelims climb. Pricing them properly protects your margin and makes your overruns visible rather than hidden.
We include a clear preliminaries section in your bill of quantities so site running costs are priced openly and not swallowed by your margin.
Need this priced on a real job?
Send us your drawings and we'll turn them into a professional, branded estimate with a fixed fee and a turnaround time.
Upload Your Drawings