Unit rate

Unit rates are the pricing atoms of estimating. A rate is built up from its resources: the labour hours a crew needs per unit, the material content including waste, the plant and equipment time, plus allocations for overheads and profit. Multiply rates by the quantities in a bill and you have a tender price; the same rates then value completed work during execution.

Rates are only meaningful together with the measurement rules they assume. A rate for "pipework, installed" priced per metre is not comparable to one priced per weld or per kilogram, and a rate that includes testing is not comparable to one that excludes it. Where unit-rate estimating goes wrong is almost always here: rates borrowed from a catalogue or a previous project without checking what the unit actually covered, or applied to a site whose productivity bears no resemblance to the one the rate was observed on.