Quantity Surveying · Kenya
Quantity Surveying in Kenya: Credentials and Measurement
Bills of quantities, valuations, tender documentation and cost control — plus a clear answer on which submissions on your project require an endorsement from a registered professional.
- Service lines under one contract
- 7
- Incorporated in Kenya
- Est. 2017
- Combined team experience
- 10+ yrs
Send us your drawings
Four fields. You'll hear back within one business day, from someone who can answer technical questions.
Registered and compliant with
Two different questions
Whether the measurement is good, and whether the signature is required
People searching for a certified quantity surveyor are usually trying to answer one of two questions, and they are not the same. The first is whether the measurement will be accurate and defensible. The second is whether a particular document — a submission, a lender's requirement, a tender return — has to carry the endorsement of a professional registered with the Board of Registration of Architects and Quantity Surveyors.
The second question is worth settling explicitly at the start of a project. Registration attaches to individuals, and the requirement attaches to specific documents rather than to the appointment as a whole, so the useful thing to establish is which of your documents need it and who will sign them.
The first question is about the work itself, and it is the one that decides whether your budget holds. TopHall Group provides bill of quantities and cost management as one of its seven service lines, measured by a practice that also does the structural design and the construction.
What weak measurement costs
Five failures that a credential alone will not prevent
Check the registration where it is required. Then check the work.
A bill built from provisional sums
Deferring measurement rather than doing it moves the cost into variations, which is where budgets are lost regardless of who signed the document.
Quantities that do not match the drawings
Measured from a superseded drawing set, a bill is worse than useless because everyone trusts it. Traceable measurement is the safeguard.
Substructure not properly measured
Excavation and foundations are the largest variable on most Kenyan projects and the item most often carried as an allowance.
Valuations certified without site measurement
Payment against invoices rather than measured work is how projects end up substantially paid and considerably less built.
A document nobody uses after the tender
If variations are not measured against the bill, most of its value was never collected.
What we produce
Cost management, measured properly
Available standalone, on projects other firms are designing and building.
Bills of Quantities
Element-by-element measurement taken off your drawings, with quantities traceable to the dimension they came from.
Cost Plans & Estimates
Early budget estimates and developed elemental cost plans as the design firms up.
Tender Documentation & Analysis
Documents that let you run a fair tender, and a comparison of returns item by item rather than by total.
Valuations & Final Accounts
Interim valuations measured on site, variations priced against the bill, and a final account you can defend.
Technical Review
Drawings checked for completeness before measurement, so gaps surface on paper rather than in the final account.
How an appointment starts
Six steps, credentials settled first
The registration question is answered before any measurement is done.
What the document is for
Tendering, a lender's requirement, a statutory submission or cost control — each has different requirements.
Establish any endorsement requirement
Whether the document must be signed by a professional registered with the Board, and confirm that is covered.
Drawing review
What can be measured, what cannot, and what must be carried as a stated assumption.
Measurement
Element by element, with every quantity traceable back to its source drawing and dimension.
Pricing & issue
Current Nairobi rates applied item by item, issued with an elemental summary and a walkthrough.
Use through construction
Valuations and variations measured against the same document, which is where most of its value sits.
Why TopHall
What you can check, and what we will tell you
Both matter more than a claim on a page.
We are clear about what we are
TopHall's team are civil engineers. Bill of quantities and cost management is one of our seven service lines. Where a document requires an endorsement from a professional registered in another discipline, we identify it and confirm it is covered.
Measurement you can audit
Quantities tied back to the drawing and dimension they came from, so any figure can be checked rather than trusted.
Rates from live projects
We procure materials on our own sites, so the pricing reflects what things cost now rather than a published index.
Drawings read by engineers
Measuring with structural knowledge catches what the drawings have not resolved instead of converting it into a provisional sum.
Independent where you need it
On projects we are not building we have no interest in any particular number, which is precisely when a measurement is most useful.
Our work
The elements that get measured
Photographs from TopHall sites and a structural visualisation by our team. Each is labelled for what it is.
Site photographSubstructure — excavation, stone and concrete, measured as separate items because each carries its own rate.
Site photographSlab construction: concrete volume, formwork area and reinforcement tonnage, each measured independently.
Design visualisationThe structural design quantities are taken off.
Before you call
What clients ask about QS credentials
Does my bill of quantities have to be signed by a registered quantity surveyor?
It depends on what the document is for. A bill produced for your own budgeting or for comparing contractor quotes generally does not carry a statutory endorsement requirement. Documents forming part of certain statutory submissions, or required by a particular lender or public procurement process, may. The right move is to establish the requirement for your specific document at the start, which we do as a matter of course before beginning work.
Is TopHall Group registered with BORAQS?
TopHall's team are civil engineers specialising in structural, environmental and water resource engineering, and bill of quantities and cost management is one of our seven service lines. Registration with the Board of Registration of Architects and Quantity Surveyors attaches to individual professionals. Where your project has a document that requires such an endorsement, we identify it at the outset and confirm that the requirement is covered on the team before the work proceeds.
Can you check a bill of quantities somebody else prepared?
Yes, and it is worth doing before you tender rather than after. We check it against the drawings for completeness and accuracy, and flag provisional sums that should have been measured, quantities that do not reconcile, and items that are missing. That review is inexpensive relative to the cost of tendering against a document with a hole in it.
Need measurement you can rely on?
Send the drawings and tell us what the document is for. We will confirm what the submission requires and what the measurement involves.
Prefer to talk now? Call +254 742 147 558.