What it does
Press Generate BOQ on a bid whose tender has been analysed, or let the document generation run do it: when the bid has no BOQ yet, the run prices it first, because the cover letter and forms quote the price. Bidligence settles the bill, then prices it:
- The tender's own bill, when it issued one as a spreadsheet (.xlsx, .xlsm, .xls or CSV). Bidligence reads every sheet that carries a bill and records where each line sits, by sheet and row. The items, units, quantities, numbering and provisional sums stay the employer's; only the rates are yours.
- A drafted bill, when it issued none. Bidligence measures a bill from the analysed tender for you to check, using the tender's BOQ categories where it names them, then prices it the same way.
- A rate on every line. A line the employer's bill already prices, such as a provisional or prime-cost sum, keeps the employer's figure. Every other line is priced, and its build-up says where the rate came from: built up from live prices, your rate library or your won contract. On a bill Bidligence drafted itself, a line the build-up misses and your own rates do not cover keeps its drafted rate, with no build-up.
- A bill that is whole or not saved. If any line could not be priced in a run, nothing is saved and you are asked to generate again, so a half-priced bill never replaces the one you had.
How each rate is chosen
Every line except the employer's own fixed sums goes through the same steps in a pricing run. The build-up prices it first; your own evidence then replaces that rate where it covers the line and passes the check:
- 1Built up from live prices. Super Intelligence prices each line from first principles for one unit of the line's own unit: every component is a quantity per unit times a unit cost, with the productivity it assumed, a short justification and the web pages its prices came from. The search is pointed at the region's published price sources, such as the KeNHA Schedule of Rates for Kenya, SINAPI and SICRO for Brazil, or RSMeans and state DOT bid tabulations for the United States. Bidligence recomputes the arithmetic itself, so a build-up that does not add up never reaches the bill.
- 2Your won-contract rate, where a contract you won covers the same scope, replaces the built-up rate. A lump sum priced for a whole contract is never used as a unit rate.
- 3Installation plus material. A contract rate for installation only, where the client supplied the material, prices a full-scope line only when it is combined with a supply-only material cost in the same unit, from your rate library or a cited web source. It applies to work for which Bidligence defines the supply-only material, such as reinforcement, concrete, structural steel, gabion boxes and geotextile. If no such cost is found, the line falls through to the next source, never to the bare installation rate.
- 4Your rate library estimate, when it clears the library's confidence gate.
- 5A sanity check on whatever wins. A won-contract, installation-plus-material or library rate more than two and a half times above or below the built-up rate, or resting on evidence spread over an order of magnitude, is set aside and the reason recorded for your team.
When your own evidence sets the rate, the built-up figure stays beside it in the line's build-up as the market check, so you see both before you commit to a price.
Live market look-ups, with a source and a confidence
The Market rates button checks the first 25 lines of the bill against the market without changing your rates. Your rate library is asked first: a confident estimate becomes the market rate without a web search, rated by the library's own confidence score and naming how many sources it rests on. The remaining lines are searched on the web for the bid's region and currency, and Super Intelligence is told to return each result with its source and one of three ratings:
Each market rate sits in its own column beside your base rate, coloured by confidence, with its source a hover away. One click adopts it as the line's rate. Above the table, Bidligence states how far the market rates sit from your base on average, so a bill priced high or low across the board shows at a glance.
- High: a published rate for the same item, unit and region, with its web address.
- Medium: derived from a close comparable, or from another year adjusted for inflation.
- Low: estimated from general knowledge, with the source given as "Super Intelligence estimate".
What you see, and what you can change
The BOQ table is on the BOQ & pricing tab of the bid workspace and of the bid wizard's Review step:
- The numbers that decide the bid: base cost, margin, bid price with its home-currency equivalent when you bid in another currency, and how far the price sits above or below the estimate, as a percentage.
- Every line editable. Change a description, unit, quantity or rate in place, add a line to a bill or delete one. A rate you type is recorded as entered by your team.
- Margin distributed across the bill. Set your profit margin with the slider, from 0 to 40%, and every line's tender rate and amount are recalculated together. Provisional and prime-cost sums, and any other line the employer's bill already priced, stay at that figure and are never marked up.
- The tender's contingency. A percentage contingency the tender's own bill adds below its subtotal appears as its own line, and the total reads as the tender's workbook totals it.
- Rate build-ups under the table. Each line's components, assumed productivity, justification, price sources (opening in a new tab), library notes and a high, medium or low confidence rating, with a search box and counts of lines with a build-up, lines backed by live sources, lines from your own rates and low-confidence lines to check. Click a line's reference to jump to its build-up.
- A warning when the bill drifts from the estimate. Where the tender or the bid records an estimate, a bill whose cost before margin is more than 15% above it, or more than 30% below it, where evaluators may treat it as abnormally low, gets a note in the bid's activity naming the five largest lines to check first.
Your own rates come first, and stay yours
Upload the priced bill of a contract you won on the Rate Library page. Bidligence is told to read only the original contract quantity, rate and amount columns, never the progress-payment columns beside them. It then refuses any rate, quantity or amount that is not printed in the document, drops a line whose quantity times rate does not reconcile with the amount printed beside it, and drops a line it cannot map to the rate catalogue in an exact unit. You see every line it would keep and every line it refused, with the reason, before anything is imported. Installation-only rates and whole-contract lump sums are labelled as such. Bids you record as won add their priced lines too.
Won-contract rates are never shared with other workspaces or blended into the shared rate index, whatever your sharing setting. They are kept out of your own library estimates as well, and offered to a line on their own, naming the contract. The uploaded document is read in memory and not kept in storage, and a Bid manager or Admin can remove an imported contract at any time.
The rate library keeps construction unit rates by country, each observation recording where it came from, such as a published schedule, a supplier quotation or price list you uploaded, an RFQ quote, cited web research or your own entry. An item's estimate is a weighted median of its observations, adjusted for price movements since each was observed, with a range and a confidence score. The model's own estimates do not count towards confidence, and an estimate with no published schedule, supplier quote or RFQ quote behind it has its confidence capped. Sharing your library observations with other workspaces is off unless you turn it on.
The tender's own workbook, filled and totalled
When the tender issued its bill as an .xlsx or .xlsm workbook, the priced copy you export is the employer's own file with your rates written into its Rate cells. Each Amount cell is a formula, quantity times rate, so the employer can audit it; each subtotal sums its own section, and the employer's own contingency and total formulas stand as issued. Styles, headings, numbering and the employer's provisional sums are left untouched. A bill issued as .xls or CSV can be priced, but has to be saved as .xlsx and uploaded again before it can be filled in place.
The workbook is not exported while any of its lines lacks a rate, or while the bid's BOQ no longer matches one of its lines. The tender's own completed forms and the branded Bill of Quantities workbook quote the total the tender's workbook adds up to, its contingency included, so the price in the forms and the price in the bill agree.
What the employer receives never carries your pricing provenance. Which won contract or library estimate set a rate, and why one was set aside, is recorded in the bid's activity for your team, and the build-ups export only in a separate Rate Review (Basis of Rates) workbook, marked as an internal working paper and left out of the submission ZIP.
How it connects to the rest of the bid desk
The priced BOQ feeds, and is fed by, the rest of the bid:
- RFQ and supplier quotes, on Pro and Enterprise: send any part of the bill to suppliers and subcontractors, compare their quotes line by line, and apply the lowest quote on each line or one supplier's quote; the rates go into the BOQ with your margin added.
- Global procurement: price in any of 100 currencies. When you change the bid currency on a priced BOQ, you choose whether its rates convert at the exchange rate or keep their figures.
- The Submission Guard links the tender's pricing schedule rows to the priced BOQ, and its audit says so when there is none.
- Bid exports: the tender's own workbook, a Bill of Quantities workbook in your company's colours with a cover sheet, the internal Rate Review, and the complete package as one ZIP.
- Hunter, the bid agent, can start the package run from a chat once you give the go-ahead, and that run prices the BOQ first when the bid has none.
Its limits, and your control
A priced BOQ is a starting point your estimator owns. Know where it stops:
- Every rate is an estimate. Rates are market-calibrated with their sources shown, not guaranteed prices. Check them against site conditions, haul distances, your plant and your own costs before you commit.
- No take-off from drawings. Quantities come from the tender's own bill, or from the bill Bidligence drafts from the tender for your estimator to check.
- Coverage depends on what can be found. Super Intelligence is told to mark a line priced from general knowledge rather than live prices as low confidence, and the build-up panel counts those lines so you can check them first.
- Changes need the Finance role or higher. Finance, Technical lead, Bid manager and Admin members can generate, edit and re-price the bill; Viewers and Reviewers cannot.
- It uses credits. Generating the BOQ and looking up market rates draw on the workspace's credits; editing lines and moving the margin do not.
- Plans. A free workspace gets 500 welcome credits once its e-mail is confirmed: enough to analyse a tender, get its Bid Score and see its BOQ priced. Generating the bid documents needs Starter (US$399 a month) or Pro (US$799 a month), each starting with a 3-day free trial. RFQ packages are part of Pro and Enterprise.
Starter
For the contractor bidding about once a month.
3-day free trial, then billed yearly. Cancel before it ends and you pay nothing. One free trial per customer and card — a card that has had one is charged when you subscribe.
- 1,500 credits a month
- Full 7-step bid wizard
- Tender analysis and Bid Score
- All 12 Super Intelligent document generators
- Priced BOQ with market-rate lookup and sources
- Submission Guard checklist
- Mock Evaluator scoring
- Branded, editable DOCX and XLSX exports
- Evidence Vault with expiry flags
- Multi-currency and FX reporting
- Deadline e-mail reminders
- 1 user
- Top up any amount from US$50 — US$1 = 2 credits
Pro
For contractors bidding every month, with a team.
3-day free trial, then billed yearly. Cancel before it ends and you pay nothing. One free trial per customer and card — a card that has had one is charged when you subscribe.
- 5,000 credits a month
- Everything in Starter
- 10 team seats with roles and comments
- RFQ packages and supplier quote comparison
- Pipeline analytics and win/loss debriefs
- Rate library across every bid you run
- 25 GB of document storage
- Priority support
Enterprise
For groups, JVs and multi-country bid teams.
Super Intelligence credits sized to your bid volume
- Everything in Pro
- A credit allowance sized to your bid volume
- 50+ seats across multiple workspaces for subsidiaries and JVs
- Full workspace data export whenever you want it
- Dedicated onboarding and bid-library migration
- Invoicing and purchase orders instead of card payment
- A written service-level agreement in your contract
How credits work
Every Super Intelligence action — tender analysis, the Bid Score, a priced BOQ, each of the 12 documents, the Submission Guard — costs credits in proportion to the work it actually does, so a bigger tender uses more and a small one less, and nothing is charged for a step that does not run. Your plan’s credits refresh each month and do not carry over; credits you buy on top never expire while your plan is active, and are only used once the month’s allowance is gone.
Top up any amount
US$1 = 2 credits · any whole amount from US$50 to US$10,000
Top-ups are available to workspaces on a plan, from Settings → Plan & billing.
Questions
- Where do the BOQ rates come from?
- Every line is first built up from labour, plant, materials, transport and subcontract costs priced with web searches for the bid's region, citing the pages used. Your won-contract rate replaces it where the scope matches, then your rate library where an estimate clears its confidence gate, and either must pass a sanity check against the build-up.
- Can Bidligence fill in the BOQ workbook the tender issued?
- Yes, when it is an .xlsx or .xlsm workbook. Your rates go into the employer's own Rate cells with quantity × rate formulas in the Amount cells, and the items, quantities, provisional sums and the employer's own contingency and total formulas stay as issued. A bill issued as .xls or CSV has to be saved as .xlsx first.
- Are my contract rates shared with other Bidligence customers?
- No. Rates from contracts you won are never shared with other workspaces or added to the shared rate index, whatever your sharing setting, and the uploaded contract is read in memory rather than kept in storage.
- Can I change a rate Bidligence suggested?
- Yes. Every description, unit, quantity and rate is editable in the table, a market rate is adopted with one click, and the margin slider re-prices every line. A rate you type is labelled as entered by your team in the internal Rate Review.
- Does the employer see how I priced the bill?
- Not where your rates came from. The workbooks the employer receives carry no build-ups, price sources or record of which contract or supplier a rate came from. Those stay in the bid's activity, on the BOQ screen and in the internal Rate Review, which is left out of the submission ZIP.
- Can I see a priced BOQ before choosing a plan?
- Yes. A new workspace receives 500 welcome credits once its e-mail address is confirmed, enough to analyse a tender, get its Bid Score and see its BOQ priced. Generating the bid documents needs Starter or Pro, both of which start with a 3-day free trial.