Thursday 24 January 2013

Land Act and The National Schedule of Rates



Its been a few weeks since my last entry. The Christmas season has been and gone and new projects and surveys have been looked at and dealt with. It is my intention to keep this blog regularly updated to encourage more people to follow and interact with me over current and future construction issues.

In this blog I want to share with you how I originated The National Schedule of Rates, a system many now take for granted, but which for so long did not exist.

In 1981 the Local Planning and Land Act required of local authorities to compete for all contracts and to show that they were being run in a responsible and demonstrable openness.  At that time I was a member of the Society of Chief Quantity Surveyors in local government, now working for themselves and later president and as a Chief Surveyor was required to resolve the issue, particularly term maintenance contracts.  

The only document then available was a Ministry of Works document which had originally come from the War Department and had been in use for so long I knew a surveyor who could put his hand into the book and pull out a description without even looking, fat as the book and the surveyor were. 

There was nothing that could be used to form a basis for the pricing of works and each local authority did something different.  This made no sense to me in that contractors who tender for various authorities needed to have some stability for pricing and surveyors within local authorities when moving between would have to learn new systems every time. 

I therefore proposed a national system whilst I was writing for a national paper called the QS Weekly.  Few probably remember those articles and that paper; however, it stimulated me to look at a standard set of prices nationally and thus form the basis for the National Schedule of Rates.  

The National Schedule of Rates was formed as a joint enterprise eventually between the Society and the Building Employers Confederation and the document was born.  Today after so many years it still exists in basically its original form although much expanded and extended into different formats and local authorities, housing associations and other government bodies are still using it throughout the country.  

 How I regret those early days when I suggested that 1% of the income ought to go to the originator and was told that wouldn't be possible as I was employed by a local authority.   

Oh well, at least I get my complimentary copy every year.  It's well worth looking at if you want some comparable prices and to let an urgent building contract whether local authority or not.