A rate book is your library of unit prices — the cost of a cubic metre of concrete, a square metre of blockwork, a day of a groundworker — that you reuse across every job. A good rate book turns estimating from a blank-page exercise into a fast, consistent process, and keeps your pricing coherent from one tender to the next.
The best rate books distinguish where a price comes from. A regional rate book gives you an indicative starting point tuned to your area; your own rates, built from real jobs, take priority; supplier quotes carry the authority of a real offer. Keeping these separate — and clearly labelled — means you always know whether a number is a considered own-rate or an indicative placeholder, and you can update the volatile items (steel, fuel, asphalt) without disturbing the rest.
ConstructQS ships with regional rate books for Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland, covering the main trades and materials, plus your own rates and saved supplier prices. Every rate in an estimate shows its source, and your own figures always take precedence over the indicative library.