BOQ Worksheet of a Bill Item

Computing an accurate net rate for a bill item involves the decomposition of its scope of work into contributions of individual resources which we call the resource components of the item. The units of measurement of the resource components generally do not correspond to each other or to the unit of the item itself. For example, a bill item for trench excavations may be measured in cubic meters, while its general labor component is measured per work shift and a digger-loader machine is measured per hour. Consequently, the components’ allowables have to be transformed to ensure that their contributions, called transformed allowables, are in accord with the Unit of the bill item. Expected production rates of Resources are often reflected in these transform factors. In the trench example, the production rate of the labor team, i.e., the amount of cubic meters of excavation that the team completes in a shift, clearly plays a role in the cost of trench excavation. Each bill item in Trimble Quest has a so-called BOQ worksheet attached to it which facilitates the component decomposition, transformation of allowables, and buildup of the item’s net rate.

Many items in a BOQ occur project after project and even within a project items may share a similar work breakdown structure. Consequently, Trimble Quest facilitates and encourages the reuse of worksheets in various ways, as described in more detail in Reuse and Share BOQ Worksheets. However, the focus right now is to attach a worksheet to an item and build it up from scratch.

When the BOQ scene is active, bill items can be added, removed, or edited. Whenever a bill item is added as described in Create Bill Items, a default item is created together with an associated default worksheet, as shown in Figure: BOQ Item Editor. When items are imported, however, users have a choice to attach worksheets to the imported items or not. By double-clicking on a bill item, the "BOQ Item Editor" is opened for that item, where it immediately becomes clear whether the item has a worksheet or not. In Figure: Inserting Worksheet for bill item, item Trenches has an attached worksheet, while item Holes has not. By using the INSERT tab, you have the option to attach an existing worksheet, either from the local project or from an external data source (described later) or to create and insert a new worksheet, which is the option followed here. Like all newly created worksheets, it will be empty and will have no resource calculations. Users will have to embed the participating resources in the worksheet and compile the rate build-up, as described in the next section.

Next topic: Work with BOQ Worksheets