Can anyone explain to me how preliminaries should be treated under the NEC3 Option B. If measuring in accordance with the NRM2, the measurement rules include for preliminaries, however the NEC3 seems to be silent on the issue and it seems to be the trend that traditional prelims bills are not included in NEC3 bills of quantities. Furthermore the NBS Building software includes for preliminaries templates for this form of contract which adds another level of confusion. Clearly there is some overlap with the Works Information, however the Works Information document does not give an opportunity to price for any such items attracting a cost. There seems to be a lot of ambiguity about this issue. Can anyone clarify?
When you are tendering for either option A or B (or C or D for that matter) any prelim type costs should be included within your total of the Prices. Therefore under option A or B if it is not a line item (and often it is not) you need to distribute your prelim costs against the existing activities (no rules here other than you want the cost sensibly distributed so not adversely front loaded) so that when you add them all up that is the Prices that you intended to put forward as your tender price.
if its an Option B then the bills should have been prepared in accordance with the Method of Measurement stated in contract Data Part 1 (and any stated amendments). There is no NEC3 BoQs as such.
Therefore if the MoM prescribes that prelims are to be separately itemised they should be. I’m not familiar with NRM2 to know if this is the case or not.