Preliminaries

Preliminaries, universally shortened to prelims, are the costs of running a construction project that cannot be attributed to any individual item of measured work. They pay for the site to exist and function rather than for anything being built.

What sits in them

Site management and supervision. Site accommodation, welfare facilities and their servicing. Temporary works, scaffolding and edge protection. Common plant such as hoists, tower cranes and forklifts. Temporary power, water and lighting. Security, hoarding and site cleaning. Insurance, bonds and warranties. Setting out and surveying.

The dividing line is whether a cost serves the project as a whole or one trade’s work. A scaffold used by everyone is a prelim; a specialist access platform for one trade’s task usually sits within that trade’s measured rate.

Why they behave differently from the rest of the job

Most prelims are time-related. A site manager costs the same per week whether the programme is ahead or behind. So does the compound, the crane, the security and the insurance.

That single characteristic explains why delay is so expensive and why so much of the argument on a difficult project is about it. An eight-week overrun is eight weeks of prelims, incurred regardless of how much work was actually completed in that period. It is also why a variation with a small direct value can have a much larger real cost if it pushes the programme.

Pricing them properly

Prelims are often priced as a single lump sum for the contract period, which is simple and unhelpful. Splitting them into fixed elements, such as setting up and dismantling the compound, and time-related elements per week, is more work at tender and considerably more useful later.

The reason is that it produces the number you need the moment an extension of time is in play. A contractor who can state the weekly time-related prelim cost has a defensible basis for a claim. One carrying a lump sum has to disaggregate it retrospectively, under pressure, against a client with every reason to challenge the analysis.

Keeping sight of them

Because prelim costs accrue continuously and quietly, they are easy to under-notice until the CVR shows margin gone. Plant left on hire past the point it was needed, accommodation retained for a phase that finished, supervision carried on a job that has slipped: each is small weekly and substantial over months.

Tracking prelim spend against its allowance as it accrues, rather than at final account, is what turns that from a discovery into a decision. That is what Sync’s cost tracking and budget management are for.