How to Quote a Renovation Job in Singapore

Structure by area, then by trade

Organise the quotation by the spaces the client walks through: entrance, living, dining, kitchen, each bedroom, each bathroom. Within each area, list the trades involved with quantities and unit rates.

This is not a presentation preference. It is how a client checks a quotation against a design, and how you will both walk the site at handover. A quotation organised by trade across the whole unit is faster to write and almost impossible for a client to verify, which is why it invites questions you then answer for free.

Every line, every time

A line item that cannot be checked is a line item that will be argued about. Four things make one checkable.

• —A quantity, with the unit the trade uses: foot run, sqft, point, lot
• —A specification: material, grade, finish, thickness, height
• —A unit rate, so quantity times rate equals the amount shown
• —Somewhere, a statement of what is not included

State the exclusions, deliberately

An exclusions list feels like an invitation to be asked why. In practice it is the single most protective section of the document, because every argument at handover is about something nobody wrote down.

Name the things clients routinely assume: the PE endorsement where masonry is being hacked, at roughly $800 to $2,000, appliances, loose furniture, curtains, anything by others, and any making-good outside the areas quoted.

Stage the payments against trades, not dates

The convention here is ten per cent deposit, forty after hacking and masonry, forty on carpentry and ten on handover. What makes it work is that each stage is tied to work being finished rather than to a point in the calendar.

"Forty per cent on completion of masonry" is a fact both sides can stand in the flat and verify. "Forty per cent at the midpoint" is an opinion, and it is the one that produces the awkward phone call.

Price from your own rates, not from memory

Quoting from memory or from the last similar job is how an old rate survives into a new quotation. Suppliers move their prices annually and the change never arrives on the day you happen to be quoting.

Keep your rates in one place, set your markup per trade, and insert priced items rather than retyping them. The margin question is a separate one and worth reading properly, because markup is not margin and the difference is most of a small firm profit.

Send it while they still remember the meeting

Speed is a real competitive advantage in this market and it is mostly a document problem rather than a pricing problem. The firm that replies within a day with something that looks considered is compared favourably to the firm that replies in a week with something better.

That is the argument for having the structure, the rates and the branding ready before the site visit rather than assembling all three afterwards. The quote builder exists for exactly this, and the page for design firms covers how it fits a studio.