Bill of Quantities in Kenya: The Document That Protects You

What a BQ actually is

A bill of quantities measures a building into priced items (cubic metres of concrete, square metres of plaster, numbers of doors) so that the cost of a house becomes arithmetic rather than an opinion.

It does three jobs, and each of them is the answer to a way Kenyan building projects go wrong.

It makes builders comparable

Without a BQ you are comparing headline figures. Builder A says 8.2M and Builder B says 7.8M, and you have no way to know that B has excluded the boundary wall, allowed a cheaper roof and assumed foundations that your soil will not permit.

The cheap number is usually cheap by exclusion. A BQ normalises the comparison so you are pricing the same house.

It makes payment measurable

Staged payments only mean something if a stage can be certified. With a BQ, “the ring beam is complete” is a measurable statement: the quantities were either placed or they were not.

Without one, payment schedules quietly become time-based, and paying by calendar rather than by progress is exactly how clients end up ahead of the work and exposed.

It controls variations

Most Kenyan budget overruns are not one dramatic surprise. They are twenty small unpriced changes, each individually reasonable, none of them written down.

With a BQ, a change is a variation order: measured, priced and approved before it happens. It turns scope creep from something that is discovered at the final account into something you decided.

What it costs and what it saves

A QS fee on a residential build is a small percentage of the project. Set against a single contested variation, or against appointing the wrong builder because their exclusions were invisible, it is one of the few genuinely reliable savings in construction.

Rates

Work	Rate	Notes
2-bedroom bungalow, basic spec	from KES 3.2M
3-bedroom bungalow, 120 m², mid finish	KES 7.2M – 8.4M	The most common Kenyan brief
4-bedroom bungalow, premium	KES 17M+
4-bedroom maisonette	KES 8M – 16M+

Rates reviewed 2026-08. Every job is confirmed with a written quotation before work starts.

Frequently asked questions

Do I really need a BQ for a house?

For anything above a modest extension, yes. Without one you are comparing builders on a single number, agreeing payments against nothing measurable, and accepting variations you cannot check. It is the cheapest protection available on a build and it costs a fraction of one dispute.

Who should prepare it?

A quantity surveyor, ideally not the contractor who will build from it. We prepare BQs, and where we are also tendering to build we will say so plainly and recommend you appoint an independent QS on larger projects.

Can a builder change the BQ mid-build?

Only through a written variation order that you approve before the work happens. That is the whole point of it. A contractor who revises quantities without your signature is not doing arithmetic, they are renegotiating.

What if a builder refuses to price a BQ?

Treat it as information. A builder unwilling to price item by item is usually protecting either a margin they do not want visible or an exclusion they do not want discussed. Neither is a reason to appoint them.

Thinking about building?

Send us the plot size, the rough brief and where it is. We will come back with a realistic cost range before anyone visits, and we will tell you if the budget and the brief do not meet.

Fixed-price written quotation · staged payments against milestones · no deposit before materials are on site