How do you check plant utilization on a low Qardho bid?

A low bid on a Qardho build can look sound while plant utilization underbidding risks quietly remove the money that keeps a machine working. The estimate shows a daily rate for a mixer, a water tanker or an excavator, but nothing for the hours it stands waiting for materials, access or a decision. Unrecovered equipment costs then surface as stoppages, not as a line item.

What does plant utilization mean in a Qardho estimate?

The owner of the machine pays for it whether it turns or sits: fuel, operator, tyres, servicing and the capital tied up in it. Utilization is the share of paid hours that produce work. An estimate that assumes eight productive hours a day is making a claim about the site, not about the machine, and that claim has to be checked. In hot, dry inland work, a water tanker may spend much of its day on the road, and a concrete mixer may run only as fast as cement, aggregate and water arrive. Ask the estimator to state the assumed working hours per machine per day and the assumed idle hours, then ask which activity supplies the next load. If the answer is vague, the allowance is a placeholder. Obtain any specific output figure from the project specification or from the supplier directly, not from a general rule.

Why does a low bid hide unrecovered equipment costs?

A low bidder usually has to recover the same machine cost from a smaller total, so the days get compressed on paper. The programme then shows plant on site for fewer days than the work needs, and the difference is paid later through delay or through work left undone. On a Qardho site the mechanism is easy to trace: standing time grows when access is unfinished, when water is not on site, when formwork or steel is late, or when a decision waits on the client. Each of these is a choice, not weather. The owner of the machine still wants payment for the idle day, and the contractor has no allowance for it. The result can be a slow site, equipment withdrawn to another job, or a request for extra payment. Whether any of that is recoverable depends on the contract, so read what the contract says about standing time, extensions of time and plant on site before signing, and ask the client's representative to confirm the position in writing.

How do you test the plant assumptions before award?

Read the rate build-up, not the summary rate. Ask for the hours per day, the number of days on site, the output per hour and the activity each machine serves. Then walk a recent site in the same town and watch one cycle: load, travel, discharge, return. Compare that observed cycle with the bid, and note how much of the day the machine stood. Ask the relevant municipal office which access and water records it keeps for the plot or the road, and request copies of those records. A short list of checks is enough:

• Mobilisation and demobilisation shown as separate items, not buried in the rate.
• Standing time and its trigger written into the contract.
• Payment tied to measured progress, not to arrival on site.
• The programme showing the machine against named activities, not against a total.

If the bidder cannot show these, the low number hides a gap.

What to do next

Take one machine from the lowest bid and ask the estimator for its build-up in writing: hours per day, days on site, output per hour and the activity it serves. Then watch that machine on a nearby site for one cycle. If the observed hours are longer than the bid, ask the client's representative to put the plant assumptions and standing time terms into the contract before award.