Price book
A price book is a maintained library of unit rates an estimator prices from, holding a cost for each defined unit of work (and often the labor, material and equipment that make up that cost), so a new estimate is built by pulling proven rates rather than deriving every price from scratch. It is also called a rate library, cost library, pricing database or, in US construction, a unit price book (UPB). A price book can be a company's own rates distilled from past jobs, or a published commercial dataset such as RSMeans; either way it is the single source of truth for what a unit of work costs, kept current so every bid starts from the same trusted numbers.
What does a price book contain?
A price book contains one priced entry per defined unit of work, so an estimator can build a bid by selecting rates rather than deriving each price from first principles. A typical line carries a description of the task, the unit of measure (per metre, per item, per hour, per square metre), and the rate, and a detailed price book breaks that rate into its labor, material and equipment components, often with a crew and productivity assumption behind it. The best price books also record where each rate came from and when it was last reviewed, because a rate with no source and no date is a number you cannot defend. In short, a price book turns scattered pricing knowledge into a structured, reusable dataset: every unit of work you commonly quote, priced once and kept current.
What is the difference between a price book, a rate library and a unit price book (UPB)?
A price book, a rate library and a unit price book are largely the same idea under different names, with the unit price book being the formal US construction version. A price book (or rate library, cost library or pricing database) is any maintained set of unit rates a team prices from, whether it is a company's own rates distilled from past jobs or a published commercial dataset. A unit price book (UPB) is the specific term used in US construction and facilities work: a comprehensive, pre-priced catalog of construction tasks, commonly organised on the CSI MasterFormat structure, with RSMeans the de facto baseline across most US Job Order Contracting programs. The distinction that matters is source, not name: a price book built from your own won-and-delivered rates reflects how you actually price, while a published book reflects a general market, so many teams start from a commercial dataset and adjust it toward their own history.
How is a price book used to build a bid, and what is a coefficient?
A price book is used to build a bid by pricing each item of scope against its matching rate, then applying adjustments for the specific job. In everyday estimating that adjustment is the estimator's judgment: location, access, risk, current supplier pricing and margin. In US Job Order Contracting (JOC), the adjustment is formalised as a coefficient (or adjustment factor): the contractor bids a single multiplier against the whole unit price book, where a coefficient of 1.00 means the work is done at book price, 1.15 means 115% of book (a 15% uplift for overhead, profit and conditions), and 0.90 means 90% of book. Either way the price book supplies the base numbers and the estimator supplies the judgment on top. That division is the point of a price book: it makes the repeatable part of pricing fast and consistent, so effort goes into the parts of the bid that genuinely need a decision.
How do you keep a price book accurate?
You keep a price book accurate by treating it as a living dataset with an owner, a review cycle and a source for every rate, not a spreadsheet that ages quietly in a shared drive. Three disciplines keep it trustworthy. First, date and source every rate, so anyone using it can see when it was last confirmed and where it came from. Second, review on a cycle and on trigger, refreshing rates on a set cadence and whenever a real supplier quote or a delivered job shows the book is drifting from the market. Third, feed it from actuals: when a job completes, compare the priced rates against what the work actually cost and correct the book, so it converges on how you really price rather than on a guess. A stale price book is worse than none, because it carries the authority of a system while quietly pricing today's bid on last year's costs.
How does a price book show up in a tender, and where does it go wrong?
In a tender, a price book is the engine behind your priced schedules: the returnable pricing forms and bills of quantities are filled by mapping each line of the buyer's scope to a rate in your book. Two failure modes recur. The first is a stale or unsourced rate carried into the bid, where an out-of-date unit price prices the job wrong and no one can trace where the number came from. The second is a mapping error, where a scope line is matched to the wrong rate, or a supplier quote is re-keyed over a book rate under deadline and transposed. This is the document-heavy matching Elora Grid is built to support: it reads the buyer's scope and priced schedules, maps each line to the corresponding entry so the pricing is structured and traceable, and cites every value back to its source, whether that is your price book or a supplier quote, so a rate can always be checked against where it came from. The rate itself, the margin and the final number stay with your estimator; the tool removes the manual matching and the transcription risk that rides on it.
Common questions
What is a price book in estimating?
A price book in estimating is a maintained library of unit rates a team prices from, holding one cost per defined unit of work, often broken into labor, material and equipment. It lets an estimator build a bid by selecting proven rates instead of deriving every price from scratch. It is also called a rate library, cost library or, in US construction, a unit price book (UPB).
What is the difference between a price book and RSMeans?
RSMeans is a published commercial price book (a unit price dataset used as the baseline across most US Job Order Contracting programs), while 'price book' is the general term for any maintained rate library, including your own. The practical difference is source: RSMeans reflects a general market, whereas a price book built from your own delivered jobs reflects how you actually price. Many teams start from RSMeans and adjust toward their own history.
How often should a price book be updated?
A price book should be reviewed on a set cadence and whenever real evidence shows it is drifting: a fresh supplier quote, a delivered job, or a market movement in labor or material cost. There is no universal interval, but every rate should carry a date and a source so its age is visible. The reliable discipline is to feed the book from actuals, correcting rates as completed jobs reveal what work truly cost.
What is a coefficient in a unit price book?
A coefficient (or adjustment factor) is the single multiplier a contractor bids against a unit price book in US Job Order Contracting. A coefficient of 1.00 means the work is done at book price, 1.15 means 115% of book (a 15% uplift for overhead, profit and conditions), and 0.90 means 90% of book. The unit price book supplies the base rates; the coefficient carries the contractor's markup and job conditions.
Send a real tender. Get the output back.
Hand Elora Grid one real task and judge the result yourself.