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Preliminaries

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The section of a tender or bill of quantities that prices the contractor's general obligations and site-wide costs — establishment, management, temporary works, insurances — separately from the measured work items.

Preliminaries (often "prelims") are the contractual packaging of site overheads in measured-works tendering, standard in UK-influenced practice. Rather than burying site-wide costs inside every unit rate, the bill carries them as their own priced section, split conventionally into fixed charges (mobilise the site, demobilise it) and time-related charges (run the site per week or month).

The split matters downstream. When the contract period is extended, the time-related prelims provide the ready-made basis for valuing the prolongation; when scope grows without extending duration, they should not grow with it. Prelims that were priced as a single lump sum give away that leverage on both sides.

At tender stage, prelims are also where pricing strategy hides. A bidder can shift money between prelims and rates to improve early cash flow or position for variations, so two bids with identical totals can behave very differently once the project starts. Reviewing the shape of the prelims, not just their total, is part of any serious bid evaluation.

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