Take off walls in machine-cut stone, build a rate that carries the hoop iron and the hoisting, keep a Nairobi rate apart from a Mombasa one, and issue the document — offline, for one payment.
If the measurement rules are the only thing you were shopping for, the paragraph above is your answer and you can stop reading. If what you actually need is somewhere to keep dimensions, build shilling rates you can defend, and produce a bill that does not fall apart on the third revision, keep going — because none of that depends on which template you started from.
BillMate is for the sole practitioner, the small consultancy and the contractor's estimator. It runs offline, holds your projects on your own device, and costs one payment rather than an annual per-seat renewal.
This is the part that replaces the template you do not get, and it is genuinely not onerous — a section in BillMate is just an element or a trade, the level a client reads sub-totals at.
Start a project from Trades (generic), which arrives as a trade-by-trade breakdown with no standard attached. Rename the sections to the headings your bills actually use, add the ones that are missing, reorder them with the arrows in each section header, and delete what you do not need. Every one of those operations is free on the 2-project tier, and deleting asks first and then offers an undo.
Then set it as your default section template in settings, and every new project starts in your own shape rather than someone else's. The one thing to be clear-eyed about: this gives you the structure. It does not instruct the AI assistant in Kenyan measurement conventions the way selecting BESMM4 or POMI instructs it in theirs, because there is no rule set behind it for the AI to be instructed in.
And the standing caveat, which is not specific to Kenya. BillMate does not check your measurement against any method of measurement, templated or not. It structures and prices the bill. The measurement, and responsibility for it, stay with the surveyor. How we handle standards generally.
The technique is the same everywhere. What changes here is what the wall is made of.
| Times | Dimensions | Squaring | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 46.80 2.90 |
135.72 | External walls, storey height, floor level to underside of ring beam. Centre-line girth 46.80 — the 47.60 external perimeter less one wall thickness at each of four corners. | |
| 7/ | 1.20 1.20 |
10.08 | Deduct seven window openings, 1200 × 1200. Timesing 7/. |
| 1.50 2.40 |
3.60 | Deduct the main entrance opening. | |
| 2/ | 0.90 2.10 |
3.78 | Deduct two external door openings. |
| Cast into the bill | 118.26 | m² | |
An external perimeter of 47.60 is not the length of the wall: measured on its centre line a rectangle loses one wall thickness at each of its four corners, so 47.60 becomes 46.80 before anything is multiplied by anything. The sheet keeps the working, so a query six months later is answered by opening it rather than by measuring the job again. The full walkthrough, including measuring on screen from an image of the drawing.
Kenya builds its walls out of quarried stone, cut to size by machine. Almost nowhere else does, and the rate shows it.
| Constituent | Quantity | Unit | Cost | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Material Machine-cut stone blocks 200 × 200 × 400 — 12.5 per m², including 5% breakage | 13.13 | nr | KSh 95 | KSh 1,247.35 |
| Material Cement for mortar 1:4, including waste | 0.28 | bag | KSh 850 | KSh 238 |
| Material Building sand, screened | 0.04 | m³ | KSh 3,200 | KSh 112 |
| Material Hoop iron reinforcement in alternate courses | 1.20 | m | KSh 28 | KSh 33.60 |
| Material Water, curing and cleaning down | 1.00 | item | KSh 35 | KSh 35 |
| Labour Mason — set, level, joint and point | 1.10 | hr | KSh 420 | KSh 462 |
| Labour Labourer — mix mortar, hoist and load out | 1.40 | hr | KSh 250 | KSh 350 |
| Plant Scaffold and hoisting, apportioned | 1.00 | m² | KSh 140 | KSh 140 |
| Net cost | KSh 2,617.95 | |||
| Overheads and establishment charges, 10% | KSh 261.80 | |||
| Profit and risk, 15% on net cost plus overheads | KSh 431.96 | |||
| Unit rate per m² | KSh 3,311.71 | |||
Illustrative constituent costs for Nairobi, 25 August 2026. These are an illustration of the method and are not current market prices — re-price every line against your own quarry and suppliers before use. BillMate's default 10% overheads and 15% profit are applied here; if your bill prices preliminaries and profit separately, set them to zero or you will recover them twice.
Look at what dominates: the stone itself, at roughly half the rate before additions, which is why the quarry you buy from moves this item more than the gang you use to lay it. The hoop iron line is the one a surveyor from another market would miss entirely — thin galvanised strip built into alternate courses, cheap per metre and universal here. Note too that this is a rate per square metre of wall, so the block size is in the description rather than the arithmetic. The same trade in a market that bills by volume is a structurally different rate — here is that version.
Continuous with everything above it: item 2.04 carries the quantity the dimension sheet cast and the rate the build-up arrived at.
| Item | Description | Unit | Qty | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.01 | Excavate foundation trench not exceeding 1.50 m deep; cart away surplus excavated material | m³ | 46.80 | KSh 1,240 | KSh 58,032 |
| 2.02 | Approved hardcore filling in 200 mm layers, well rammed and consolidated, blinded with murram | m³ | 28.40 | KSh 2,180 | KSh 61,912 |
| 2.03 | Vibrated reinforced concrete class 20/20 in strip foundations and ground beams | m³ | 22.60 | KSh 18,400 | KSh 415,840 |
| 2.04 | Walling in 200 mm machine-cut stone blocks in cement mortar 1:4, with hoop iron reinforcement in alternate courses | m² | 118.26 | KSh 3,311.71 | KSh 391,642.82 |
| 2.05 | High tensile steel bar reinforcement, cut, bent and fixed in position including binding wire | kg | 1840.00 | KSh 168 | KSh 309,120 |
| 2.06 | Damp-proof membrane, 1000 gauge polythene sheeting laid on blinding with 300 mm laps | m² | 96.40 | KSh 1,420 | KSh 136,888 |
| 2.07 | Provisional sum for connection to mains water and sewer, to be expended as directed | sum | 1 | KSh 480,000 | KSh 480,000 |
| Carried to collection | KSh 1,853,434.82 | ||||
Illustrative project and illustrative rates. Note the units this market bills in — reinforcement by the kg rather than the tonne, and hardcore and murram filling measured by volume. One rate is an AI draft and is marked as one, on screen and on the exported document, which also counts them. The same page for three markets.
Distance from the quarry, distance from the port and distance from the sea all move the number, and the last of those moves the specification as well.
General observations about how these markets differ, not price data. BillMate publishes no Kenyan rate index — your library is the price basis, and we explain why.
| Description | Unit | Rate | Location | Priced | Source | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Walling in 200 mm machine-cut stone blocks, cement mortar 1:4 | m² | KSh 3,311.71 | Nairobi — Ruiru | 2026-06 | Own build-up | Current |
| Ditto, same specification | m² | KSh 3,684 | Mombasa | 2026-05 | Priced tender | Current |
| Vibrated reinforced concrete class 20/20 in foundations | m³ | KSh 18,400 | Nairobi — Ruiru | 2026-06 | Priced tender | Current |
| Approved hardcore filling, rammed and consolidated | m³ | KSh 2,180 | Nakuru | 2026-04 | Subcontract quote | Current |
| Damp-proof membrane, 1000 gauge polythene sheeting | m² | KSh 1,420 | Nairobi — Ruiru | 2026-06 | AI draft | Unverified |
| High tensile steel reinforcement, cut, bent and fixed | kg | KSh 168 | Kisumu | 2024-10 | Priced tender | Stale |
The first two rows are the same walling specification priced in Nairobi and Mombasa, and they sit side by side rather than averaging into a number that is true in neither. One entry is an unverified AI draft and says so. One is flagged stale at 12 months. Illustrative rates, not market evidence — how the library works.
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Buy Team — ₦149,999On the price: Charged in naira at Selar checkout. This page shows the Africa price because you are reading the Africa page, and both buttons open the Africa product — nothing here is chosen from your IP address. Other regions, and the region selector, are on the pricing page. The amount you pay is the amount shown at checkout before you confirm. In KES: Selar shows this converted into KES at checkout rather than in NGN, and a converted figure moves with the rate — so the amount on the checkout page is the one that governs, and we publish no KES figure here that could go stale. Kenyan cards are accepted. On VAT: BillMate applies one tax line to the sub-total after preliminaries and contingency, at whatever rate you type. It does not know your tax position and does not try to work it out.
Every market above has a page of its own, and two of them say plainly that no national method of measurement ships for them — see what "localised" means here.
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