Drylining estimating software for contractors

In detail

Drylining, in detail.

Drylining lives and dies on the rate per square metre — and on noticing when the job on site stops matching the job you priced. Nexley builds your rates up from first principles, turns partition layouts into board and stud schedules, and prices the variation the day the architect moves a wall, so the money follows the drawings instead of leaking between revisions.

• Rate build-ups you can defend line by line
• Board schedules straight off the layouts
• Variations priced while they are still fresh

A rate is an argument — build it so it wins

When a main contractor's surveyor challenges your metre rate, a number scribbled from memory folds. A build-up holds. Nexley assembles each partition type from its parts — metal stud at the specified centres, track top and bottom, the board layers each side, insulation, fixings, tape and joint to the finish level the specification calls for — with your labour constants against every operation. Fire-rated board and acoustic variations become their own types with their own rates, not a hopeful percentage scribbled onto the standard one. The result reads like the workings of a careful estimator, because that is what it is.

From layout drawing to loading-out list

The measurement engine behind this is the same take-off and bill of quantities capability used across trades — pointed here at SFS, partitions, wall linings and ceilings, where the quantities are large, the repetition is high, and a small per-metre error compounds across an entire floor plate. If you are still weighing up estimating software in general, our plain-English guide to construction estimating software explains how it turns a drawing into a price and what to check before you buy. Lining out an office fit-out? Our page on software for fit-out contractors covers CAT A and CAT B option quotes, snagging and retention.

The variation is where drylining margin goes to die

Every dryliner knows the pattern. Revision C moves three partitions, the site agent says "just crack on", and the paperwork happens at final account — where memory is short and goodwill shorter. Because Nexley holds the measured baseline it priced from, a changed drawing is a re-measure, not an argument: what changed, what it costs at contract rates, drafted as a variation the day it lands via automated quoting. Fire-rated work sharpens the point — a corridor upgraded from one board layer to two is a real cost you either capture that week or donate to the main contractor at the end of the job.