My take on the Schedule of Prices (SoP) for Mechanical Services.

Salam, 

My take on the Schedule of Prices (SoP) for Mechanical Services.

1. You don’t have to start from scratch. You can use the previous job’s SoP and modify accordingly, especially if your typing style is ‘patuk ayam’ (non-Malaysians, please Google that).

2. Try to make time to prepare the SoP yourself, especially when you’re the designer. Some of us may ask our typist to type it out based on our draft. Personally, I don’t like that as I’m of the opinion that it’s a technical document and should be prepared by technical people. Maybe because I can type without looking at the keyboard (haha).

2. Normally, we’ll start of the SoP with the Preliminaries section.

What's in it?

- Items like Shop Drawings, As-built Drawings, Operations and Maintenance Manual.

- Items like Performance Bond, wait... Performance Bond shouldn't be in the Prelims. It's the Nominated Sub-Contractor's responsibility to issue a PB to the Main Contractor. The Main Contractor also issues a PB to the Client. Don't know what PB is? Please read PAM 2006 or 2018 or Google. 

- Items like Insurance, Site Management. Site Management means that the NSC must have one Project Manager, one or even two supervisors. The rest? That would be his workers who the NSC sub-lets to. Some of you may have a question about sub-letting, I understand. In this practice, it's the NSC's own sub-contractors, not another Plumbing or ACMV or Fire or Electrical Installation Company (meaning a sub-contractor). To put a Project Manager and two supervisors (depending on the size of the project), the Client must pay. 

For insurance, if you're using PAM 2006 or 2018, please read the clauses on insurance. I'm not sure about JKR's (seldom use them), but you may ask engineers who are familiar with this or read the JKR 203N.

- Cost of Tender Document? No. This one the NSC cannot claim from the Client. 

- Cost of Sub-Contract Document? No. The Consultant prepares the Sub-Contract Document so he bills the Client as part of the litography charges. 

Some engineers would like to put in item for Testing and Commissioning and Service and Maintenance in Prelims. It's not wrong. My preference is to have the T&C and S&M items in each section of the SoP.

For example, the SoP has 3 sections - namely Cold Water, Sanitary and Rainwater Harvesting. So each section will have T&C and S&M at the end of each sections. 

3. You must remember that the M&E contract is of a lump-sum type. So, your tender drawings and specifications takes precedence over the SoP. You must ensure that there is a statement in your Tender Document which states that your drawings and specs take precedence. 

You can have that statement in the Supplementary Conditions of Contract. Should the Contractor try to argue with you that the SoP should take precedence, you can point out to him the statement and ask him why he didn’t study the drawings and specs properly when he was preparing his bid.

 However, do ensure that you have the section in your SoP called “Other Items” so that whatever that you might miss in your SoP and those things you missed are in the drawings and specs, the Contractor might pick them up and write them down in “Other Items”. How to draft this “Other Items” thing? Well, later I’ll put up a sample of an SoP I’ve prepared.

4. Study the drawings carefully. Since you’re not putting in any quantities, except maybe for large equipment such as chillers, tanks or pumps (just to name a few), you can use the schematics as your guide and list down and describe briefly the items that you see on your schematics.

5. For a multi-storey building, it’s good to arrange the schedule according to the floors, for example :-

Supply, deliver and install….. c/w the following, as per drawings and/or specifications :-

a) Valves

b) Fittings

c) Hangers and supports

d)….

e)….

f)….

For the following floors :-

1) Basement 2

2) Basement 1

3) Lower Ground Floor

4) Ground Floor

5)…..

6)……

Why? Because that will help to ease the progress claim assessment process by your site staff later. Remember that your SoP will be the basis for the Sub-Contractor to produce his Progress Claim.

6) Avoid repetitions as much as possible. For example, if your drawings (either schematic or floor plan) has already stated the dimensions and the capacity of your FRP tank, do not repeat the dimensions and the capacity in your SoP. Let there be only ONE source of reference. The problem with having too many references is that you may change your drawing but you forgot to change the description in your SoP. No doubt that the drawings take precedence, right? But save yourself from that hassle. If the Sub-Contractor wants to price the tank, let him look for the dimensions and the capacity of the tank – or any other equipment – on the drawings.

7) If possible, for Testing and Commissioning and Service and Maintenance during DLP, have a separate item for those. Avoid lumping T&C and S&M in the sentence, i.e “Supply, deliver and install…… complete with T&C and S&M during DLP…” Again, it’s about Progress Claim assessment, among other reasons.

8) If your tanks are of RC, remember that you’re not quantifying the structure of the tank, ok? But you have lots of other stuffs that you want your plumbing contractor to install there so list them out in your SoP based on your Tank Details drawings, eg access hatch, puddle collar, vortex inhibitor, and those pipes you need to put in before the casting of the tank.

9) It’s good to state items such as builders work in connection, especially when you’re working on retrofit jobs – dealing with existing buildings – example – coring and making good of floor slabs. Believe me, there used to be arguments between the Structure and M&E on this item. To me, I’d rather have the Mechanical Contractor price those items, especially if I didn’t produce any opening drawings for the Structure Engineer to pick up the required openings (pasal tak sempat atau lupa - alasan standard).

Since this looks like becoming a thesis, I’d better stop here. InshaAllah, I’ll put up a sample of the SoP which I’ve prepared and try my best to answer your questions.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve might have missed some important stuffs here so please share your experience or ideas for the benefit of everyone reading this posting ya?

Allah SWT knows best.

May we all be guided by Allah SWT, insha Allah. Amin.

Thank you for reading.

Peace,

Wassalam,

FbI