10/02/2025

A lifetime of Bills of Quantities by Chris Bowers

“When I left Trent Polytechnic in 1980 proudly clutching my Quantity Surveying honours degree certificate, I immediately joined Rex Procter and Partners in Bradford. My role for much of the 5 years spent at that excellent company was the production of Bills of Quantities (BQ). In the 40 years since I left RPP I’ve done a wide variety of typically quantity surveying work in the UK, Europe and Africa but for the last 8 years have found myself again in a BQ production environment, this time in Asia.

Truth is that I love the BQ production process. I love poring over construction drawings and applying whatever measurement rules the client requires. I love filling in the gaps with a workable solution when the drawings have been issued a little earlier than optimum, and the architect or engineer still needs to complete the design. I love the pressure of getting BQs to clients quickly in order for them to meet their own deadlines.

So my career has revolved around Bills of Quantities and despite being told for the last 20 years that there’s less demand, we’re still turning them out at a rate of Knotts. The difference those 40 years have made is that now I lead a group of over a hundred quantity surveyors in Sri Lanka. Part of my role is to assist the team by educating them on Western construction methodology, and terms to apply to standard methods of measurement.

I don’t measure anymore which is regrettable, but I’m so proud of the efforts of the men and women here who work hard to build our company’s reputation for accuracy and the meeting of deadlines. Whether the product is for the UK, Australia, New Zealand or Middle East, the team we have assembled in our Colombo and Kandy offices deliver the goods.

And of course, those in our UK office, headed by co-director Derek Mynott work hard to keep our order books filled and our software churning. It really is a great international effort and success story. You can see the wide variety of commission we’ve supplied bills to here: Explore Our Construction Portfolio: Mynotts Bowers

If you need BQs for any project size, send the details to us, you won’t be disappointed. Make initial contact with our BDM in UK Cassie ([email protected]) or contact me. We’d love to hear from you.”

Yours truly,

Chris Bowers

Managing Director, Mynott Bowers (Private) Limited, Sri Lanka