The cost Top 40

The first in a series of reports, supplied by RICS research arm the BCIS, we glean the latest prices from live accepted tenders in the past quarter. The figures represent the going rates for a £1m scheme in central England – they exclude preliminaries. “They are median rates, representative of what’s happening,” says Lyndsay Pullen, a technical consultant at BCIS.

The median rates come amid a cloudy picture for overall tender prices – the BCIS said last week that rates would experience a “bumpy ride” in 2005 before evening out in the next two years.

Pullen points to the finishing trades as the most susceptible to movement of late, which has pushed up rates for plaster and plumbing. “Some have argued that the influx of labour from Eastern Europe has eased this but I haven’t seen that as much,” he says. “There’s been a well documented shortage of plumbers which has contributed to the significant movement in tender prices over the last couple of years, of around 14%. What with huge projects coming up in the South East such as the Olympics it should still remain an issue.”

Pullen claims that steel prices have eased following significant hikes last year but that an item such as blockwork has gone up in price in recent months.

Pullen says that the rates most likely to move in the future are likely to be those affected by hikes in fuel rates such as plastic that have longer delivery distances than other materials.