How do you quote a job from the building plans?
Quoting from a drawing is a take-off: you go through the plan once, systematically, and turn it into a list of counted items (sockets, lights, radiators, doors), measured items (cable runs, pipe runs, areas of floor, wall and roof, read off the scale) and assumed items (everything the drawing does not show, which you state rather than guess silently). Price the list from your own rates, write your assumptions and the drawing number and revision on the quote, and put a provisional sum against anything you cannot see until you are on site.
Which drawings you are looking at
A domestic job might come with one A3 floor plan; a new build or an extension comes with a set. Know which sheet answers which question before you start counting, because the same socket can appear on three of them and you only want it once.
- Floor plans — the layout from above, one per storey. Walls, doors, windows, room names, usually the kitchen and bathroom fittings. The sheet you measure areas and runs from.
- Electrical or services layouts — the floor plan with the sockets, switches, lights, radiators, sanitaryware and boiler position drawn on as symbols, with a key. The sheet you count from. If there is no services layout, the counts are yours to propose.
- Elevations and sections — the building from the side and cut through. Ceiling heights, roof pitch, where the first floor sits. Without a section you are guessing at every vertical drop.
- The schedule and the specification — sometimes a table on the drawing, sometimes a separate document: which brand of downlight, which radiator size, which door. If a spec exists, the quote should say it was priced against it.
Every sheet carries a title block in the corner: drawing number, revision letter, scale and date. Read it first. A plan marked Rev C has been changed twice already, and the version the customer emailed you may not be the one the builder is working from.
Count the fittings, then measure the runs and areas
Do the count in one pass, room by room, with a mark on each symbol as you go so nothing is counted twice or missed at a page fold. The key on the drawing tells you what each symbol means — a double socket, a switched fused spur, a downlight, a two-way switch, a towel rail — and the count goes on the quote with the room next to it: “Double socket, kitchen, 6” rather than a single line of twenty-two sockets the customer cannot check.
Then measure. The scale in the title block (1:50 and 1:100 are the common ones) turns a distance on paper into a distance in the building; a scale rule does it directly, and a PDF viewer’s measure tool does it once you have calibrated it against a dimension that is written on the drawing. What you measure depends on the trade:
- Electrical — cable runs from the consumer unit to each point, allowing for the drop down the wall and the rise into the ceiling void that the plan view hides.
- Plumbing and heating — pipe runs from the boiler to each radiator and outlet, the number of radiators and their sizes if the drawing gives them, and the room sizes if it does not and you are sizing them yourself.
- Building — floor areas for screed and boarding, wall areas for plaster and paint, roof area for tiles, the length of every wall for blockwork, and the count of openings for lintels, windows and doors.
Add waste where the material is cut — boards, tiles, plasterboard, cable off a drum — and say so on the line, so a customer comparing your quote with a bare list of areas understands why the number is higher.
What the plan cannot tell you
A drawing shows the finished intent. It does not show the building as it is, and the gap between the two is where quotes from plans go wrong.
| What the plan shows | What it does not | |
|---|---|---|
| Fittings | Where each socket, light, radiator and outlet is meant to end up. | Whether the existing wiring or pipework can be reused, or the whole lot is being replaced. |
| Runs | Distances in plan, to scale. | Vertical drops, ceiling heights without a section, what is behind a wall, and what the route actually has to go round. |
| The site | The building. | Access, parking, where the skip goes, an occupied house versus an empty one, and whether other trades are on site at the same time. |
| The stage | The end state. | Whether you are quoting first fix, second fix or both, and who does the making good. |
| The spec | A symbol for “downlight”. | Which downlight, unless there is a schedule — and the difference in price can be threefold. |
Where it matters, go and look. A plan-only quote on a job you have never visited is an estimate in all but name, and calling it one is more honest than a fixed price built on a floor you have not lifted.
Write the assumptions into the quote
Everything in the right-hand column above that you could not resolve becomes a line of assumptions on the quote — a short list under the line items, in plain words. “Priced as first and second fix.” “Assumes existing circuits are reused; a rewire is not included.” “Radiator sizes as scheduled on drawing 101.” “Ceiling heights taken as 2.4m.” This is not hedging. It is the description of the job you are actually offering to do, and it is what stops a conversation in March about what “the plans” meant in January.
Two things belong at the top of that list every time:
- The drawing number and revision the quote was taken off — “Quoted against drawing 101 Rev C, dated 4 March.” If the architect issues Rev D with three more sockets, the quote says what it covered and the extra is a variation, priced before you fit it, not an argument after.
- A provisional sum for anything you cannot see until you are on site: the state of the existing board, the run under the concrete floor, the drainage you will find when the slab comes up. A stated allowance the customer can see is a fixed price that stays honest; a number quietly buried in the total is the one that gets disputed.
Price the counted and measured list from your own rates — your labour rate, your usual prices for the fittings you fit — not from a figure per point pulled from a forum. The pricing guide covers the method; a plan changes what you count, not how you price it.
Letting the software do the counting
On Speak to Quote’s Pro plan you can attach the floor plan or drawing — a PDF or a photo of it — alongside your dictated notes, or on its own, and the AI does the take-off: it counts the sockets, lights, radiators and fittings on the drawing and reads the areas and runs from the dimensions, then returns them as line items with the room on each. Your notes still define the job (“first and second fix, reuse the existing circuits”); with no notes at all it takes off the whole plan for your trade. Every assumption it makes goes into the quote’s notes for you to check, exactly where this guide says yours should go.
The prices come from your own price book, live pricing or what you said, never from the drawing, and the plan is read for that one quote and not stored. The counts are yours to verify before you send — a good take-off is checked twice whoever did the first pass. See what a quote for electricians or a quote for builders looks like when it comes back, or the plans feature itself.