Edward Skoyles (14 March 1923 – 30 July 2008) was the first quantity surveyor employed in the UK to research costs and practices in the

construction industry Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press 2009 and come ...

. He did his research from 1960 until 1984 at the

Building Research Establishment The Building Research Establishment (BRE) is a centre of building science in the United Kingdom, owned by charitable organisation the BRE Trust. It is a former UK government national laboratory that was privatised in 1997. BRE provides researc ...

. Among his research projects was developing a new type of

tendering An invitation to tender (ITT, otherwise known as a call for bids or a request for tenders) is a formal, structured procedure for generating competing offers from different potential suppliers or contractors looking to obtain an award of business ...

for

construction Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press 2009 and com ...

projects called

operational bills Operational bills are a tendering document for estimating costs prepared by architects that describes a construction project in terms of the operations (which include labour and plant) needed to build it. This form of document contrasts with that o ...

.Skoyles ER. (1966) Examples from operational bills Skoyles ER. (1967) Preparation of an operational bill. Building Research Station Skoyles ER. (1968) Introducing bills of quantities: (Operational format). Building Research Station. Skoyles ER. (1969) Examples from bills of quantities (Operational format). He also started the study of the actual amount of waste in the construction industry,Skoyles ER. Materials wastage: a misuse of resources. Building Research and Practice, CP 67/76, Oct. 1976. Skoyles ER. (1978) Site accounting for waste of building materials, BRE Current Paper CP 5 /78, London: HMSO. Skoyles ER. (1981) Waste of building materials, BRE Digest Number 247, London: HMSO. Skoyles ER. Skoyles JR. (1987) Waste Prevention on Site, Mitchell Publishing, London. and investigated the varying methods of cost estimation practices used in different countries. His contributions are still widely discussed in the academic literature particularly upon operational bills,Shanley LF. (1970). Report on pilot project on operational bills. An Foras Forbartha (Irish National Institute for Physical Planning and Construction Research) England Symposium on Operational Bills (1967). Symposium on Operational Bills discussion. Report on a Symposium on Operational Bills held at the Building Research Station, 8 March. Royal Institute of Surveyors (Republic of Ireland Branch) (1970). The bill of quantities and the operational bill: Seminar, Dublin, March. An Foras Forbartha (Irish National Institute for Physical Planning and Construction Research) Lal H. (2002). Quantifying and Managing Disruption Claims. Thomas Telford. .Dmaidi, N. (2003)
The State of the Art in Integration of Cost and Time Models
. An-Najah University Journal of Research. 17(1). 99-122.Ashworth, A. (2002). Pre-contract studies: development economics, tendering and estimating. Edition: 2. Wiley-Blackwell. p.332.Jaggar D. Ross A. Smith J. Love P. (2002). Building Design Cost Management. Edition: 2. Wiley-Blackwell. pp147-148 and building wasteFellows, R. Langford, D. Newcombe, R. Urrypp. S. (2002). Construction Management in Practice. Wiley-Blackwell. pp.180-181Hellingsworth, B. Best, R., de Valence, G. (2002). Design and Construction: Building in Value. Butterworth-Heinemann p. 266

Operational bills

Tendering An invitation to tender (ITT, otherwise known as a call for bids or a request for tenders) is a formal, structured procedure for generating competing offers from different potential suppliers or contractors looking to obtain an award of business ...

in the UK

is traditionally based upon Bills of quantities in which the estimation of costs is based on the combined cost of materials, building plant and

labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

in the completed works. Edward Skoyles proposed a new form of tendering,

in which such tendering was based around building tasks.Skoyles ER. (1981). Production orientated tendering: a resume and re-examination for the early eighties of the issues involved. Quantity surveyor, 37, (6) 110-113. This allowed for the separate costing of materials, plant and labour. This offered several advantages including a more accurate ability to cost a proposed project, better communication between design and production and ease in creating critical-path analysis for the

contractor A contractor is a person or company that performs work on a contract basis. The term may refer to: Business roles * Defense contractor, arms industry which provides weapons or military goods to a government * General contractor, an individual o ...

. A refinement of this was "bills of quantities (operations)” in which the operations are described in terms of the rules of the standard method of measurement rather than labour and materials. Priced-activity schedules of the

NEC Engineering and Construction Contract The New Engineering Contract (NEC), or NEC Engineering and Construction Contract, is a formalised system created by the UK Institution of Civil Engineers that guides the drafting of documents on civil engineering, construction and maintenance proj ...

are a modern descendant of operational bills.Potts, K. (2008). Construction Cost Management: Learning from Case Studies, Routledge.

Building waste

Traditionally, the estimates for normal waste on construction sites has been 2.5-5%, however, empirical observational research done by Skoyles on 280 sites found that this underestimated it by roughly half—equivalent annually to the materials needed to build a town the size of

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in Essex, in the East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011. The demonym is Colcestrian. Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colches ...

. Further considerable variability existed between sites suggesting an opportunity for improvement. This work led to allowances for materials waste to be more accurately allowed for in cost estimates. As Fellows and coauthors note his work was important since: "It is interesting to postulate the possible consequences of an estimate including only one-half of the requisite materials wastage allowance, especially during a period of slump, when small profit margins prevail … anticipated profit f 2%is almost entirely eroded". Further, this research highlighted the need for improved education in site practices: "In the constructions industry, Skoyles was the first to recognize that the problem of material wastage was more dependent upon the attitudes and behavioral tendencies of individuals involved than upon the technical processes employed".

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Skoyles, Edward 1923 births 2008 deaths Alumni of London South Bank University Alumni of the University of Westminster British Army personnel of World War II British civil servants Deaths from abdominal aortic aneurysm English surveyors People from Harrow, London Quantity surveyors