Preliminaries in construction

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All of these “preliminaries” are quantifiable, so why should they be expressed as a percentage of the overall costs? This seems a lazy and sloppy way to calculate them, and not particularly accurate, and a licence to print money for the contractor.

In response to comment above: It's true that prelims are quantifiable after the event (eg. at final account) but the best a Contractor can do when tendering on a fixed price basis is make an appropriate allowance to cover the prelim costs it expects to incur. In doing so, it is left with the risk should it incur greater prelim expense during the execution of the works (save for instances like variations, where those costs arose due to factors outside of the Contractor's control). The approach proposed by the OP above would leave all the risk with the Employer and a Contractor could easily substantiate additional prelim costs if it were so inclined.

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