The RICS POMI work sections ship as a template. Take off piling on a dimension sheet, build a rate that carries the chilled water and the night shift, run a Dubai job in dirhams and a Riyadh job in riyals on one install — and let nothing be converted behind your back.
No sign-up for the free tier. No sales call, no procurement cycle, and no renewal date.
Gulf consultancies at the large end already run measurement packages licensed per seat and per year, and for drawing- and model-led measurement at volume that is the right purchase — we say so on the comparison page.
BillMate is for the rest of it: the independent surveyor, the two-person consultancy, the contractor's estimator pricing a package that has landed as a PDF. It turns a measure you already have into a properly structured POMI bill, in the project's own currency, without an annual renewal — and it keeps working when you are on a site with no signal.
The RICS Principles of Measurement (International) is deliberately brief, and that brevity is exactly why it travels across the Gulf. Where a national method of measurement runs to hundreds of pages of specific rules, POMI states general principles and short trade rules and leaves the particulars to the contract.
The practical consequence is that what a rate is deemed to include is defined in your preliminaries far more often than in the rule set. A POMI bill lives or dies on descriptive precision, and a vague item description is not a style problem — it is a claim waiting to happen.
So write the preambles once and keep them. Put your preamble items into the Preliminaries section as descriptions and capture them into the rate library. They travel to the next project instead of being retyped from the last bill you can find. The full POMI position, with the section list.
One thing BillMate does not do, and will not claim: it does not check your measurement against POMI, and it holds no library of standard POMI descriptions. It structures and prices the bill. The measurement and the preambles are yours.
POMI gives piling a work section of its own, which is characteristic of the markets it is used in. On reclaimed ground, sabkha or a high water table, the substructure bill starts at the pile and the take-off has to say which group each length belongs to.
| Times | Dimensions | Squaring | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 34/ | 18.00 | 612.00 | Core and lift-pit piles, platform level to toe. Timesing 34/ — the group is one design length, measured once and multiplied. |
| 38/ | 15.00 | 570.00 | Perimeter column piles, ditto, to the shallower founding stratum. |
| 14/ | 14.00 | 196.00 | Piles to the single-storey podium, ditto. |
| 86/ | 0.50 | 43.00 | Deduct 500 mm on every pile above cut-off level. That length is cast, then broken out and the reinforcement bent into the cap — so it is measured under item 1.03, not here. |
| Cast into the bill | 1335.00 | m | |
The deduction is the interesting line. Every pile is cast above cut-off level and then broken down, so the concrete in that 500 mm is not the same item as the pile below it — it is cut away under item 1.03. Whether you measure it that way is a question for your preambles, not for the software; BillMate does the arithmetic you ask for and keeps the working behind the quantity. The full walkthrough, including measuring on screen from an image of the drawing.
A Gulf concrete rate is not a European one with the currency changed. Look at what has its own line here.
| Constituent | Quantity | Unit | Cost | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Material Ready-mixed C40/20, sulphate-resisting, delivered — including 3% waste | 1.03 | m³ | AED 245 | AED 252.35 |
| Material Chilled water and ice batching surcharge — hot-weather concreting | 1.00 | item | AED 22 | AED 22 |
| Material Retarding admixture for haul distance and placing time | 1.00 | item | AED 8.50 | AED 8.50 |
| Material Curing — wet hessian, polythene and curing compound | 1.00 | item | AED 14 | AED 14 |
| Labour Gang — place, compact and finish, night pour including shift allowance | 0.90 | hr | AED 78 | AED 70.20 |
| Plant Static concrete pump and operator — apportioned | 0.30 | hr | AED 165 | AED 49.50 |
| Plant Poker vibrator — hire and fuel | 0.35 | hr | AED 11 | AED 3.85 |
| Net cost | AED 420.40 | |||
| Overheads and establishment charges, 10% | AED 42.04 | |||
| Profit and risk, 15% on net cost plus overheads | AED 69.37 | |||
| Unit rate per m³ | AED 531.81 | |||
Illustrative constituent costs for Dubai, 25 August 2026. These are an illustration of the method and are not current market prices — re-price every line against your own supply chain before use. BillMate's default 10% overheads and 15% profit are applied here; if your bill prices preliminaries separately, set them to zero on the build-up or you will recover them twice.
Chilled batching, a retarder for the haul, wet curing and a night shift are all separate lines because they are all separately negotiable, and because a checker who wants to know why the rate is what it is should be able to see them. Bury them in a lump and the rate stops being defensible the moment somebody asks. The same item batched on site in a different market is a structurally different rate — here is that version.
Continuous with everything above it: item 1.02 carries the length the dimension sheet cast, and item 1.04 carries the rate the build-up arrived at.
| Item | Description | Unit | Qty | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.01 | Bored cast in-situ piles, 600 mm diameter; number of piles, including setting out, boring through made ground and preparing to receive concrete | nr | 86 | AED 320 | AED 27,520 |
| 1.02 | Bored cast in-situ reinforced concrete piles, 600 mm diameter; length measured from platform level to toe | m | 1335.00 | AED 268 | AED 357,780 |
| 1.03 | Cutting off tops of piles above cut-off level and preparing projecting reinforcement for bonding into pile caps | nr | 86 | AED 145 | AED 12,470 |
| 1.04 | Reinforced concrete grade C40/20, sulphate-resisting, in pile caps and ground beams; poured against faces of excavation | m³ | 214.00 | AED 531.81 | AED 113,807.34 |
| 1.05 | High-yield steel reinforcement, cut, bent and fixed in position, including tying wire and spacers | t | 18.60 | AED 3,420 | AED 63,612 |
| 1.06 | Two-coat spray-applied bituminous tanking to external faces of pile caps and ground beams, with protection board | m² | 620.00 | AED 96.50 | AED 59,830 |
| 1.07 | Provisional sum for dewatering and temporary support to excavations, to be expended as directed | sum | 1 | AED 180,000 | AED 180,000 |
| Carried to collection | AED 815,019.34 | ||||
Illustrative project and illustrative rates. One rate is an AI draft and is marked as one, on screen and on the exported document, which also counts them. Note that these rates carry material, labour, plant, overheads and profit and nothing else — preliminaries, contingency and VAT are applied once on the summary rather than smeared through every line. The same page for three markets.
The Gulf surveyor's ordinary week is a Dubai job, a Riyadh package and a Kuwait enquiry. That is a data-integrity problem before it is a software problem.
Each project carries its own currency, measurement system and tax settings. A riyal job and a dirham job sit side by side on the same install and never touch each other's figures.
A rate in one currency is never applied to a bill in another. There is no exchange rate anywhere in BillMate, because a rate converted at today's rate is not evidence of anything.
When you uplift or search the library you can restrict the operation to rates in the project's currency — and add a text filter to narrow it further.
Every figure is rounded at the point it is produced, to the currency's own precision. The Kuwaiti dinar shows three decimals, not two, so a fils-level rate stays a fils-level rate.
AED, SAR and KWD are supported alongside USD, GBP and eight others. The consequence of the no-conversion rule is worth stating plainly: if you want a Dubai rate to inform a Riyadh bill, you re-price it and record where the new figure came from. That is more work, and it is the correct amount of work. How the library works.
Three percentages apply across the whole bill, and BillMate applies them itself so they stay visible instead of disappearing into the rates.
| Line | Applied to | Percentage | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Measured work | Every section, including provisional and prime cost sums | — | AED 6,420,000 |
| Preliminaries | Measured work | 9% | AED 577,800 |
| Contingency | Measured work plus preliminaries | 5% | AED 349,890 |
| Sub-total | The three lines above | — | AED 7,347,690 |
| VAT | Sub-total | 5% | AED 367,384.50 |
| Grand total | Sub-total plus VAT | — | AED 7,715,074.50 |
Illustrative project total, 25 August 2026. The preliminaries figure here is set to 9% because that is nearer what a Gulf bill carries; BillMate's own default is 3%, and both are yours to change. On the tax line: BillMate does not know your tax position and does not try to work it out — you set the label (VAT, GST, Sales Tax, Tax or None) and you type the rate. The 5% above is the UAE rate at the time of writing; Saudi Arabia is higher and several Gulf states levy none at all. Confirm what applies to your contract, then type it.
Arabic is one of 6 interface languages and it switches the entire layout right-to-left — not a translated string table over a left-to-right screen.
By default the terms of art stay in English: BOQ, Preliminaries, Contingency, Taking-off, Rate build-up, the unit symbols, VAT, and the names of the methods of measurement. That is a deliberate choice, because most surveyors in the region read those as fixed terminology whatever language the rest of the interface is in. If you would rather have them localised, Translate technical terms in settings does exactly that.
Your own descriptions are your own business. Arabic item descriptions export correctly: the CSV is written as UTF-8 with a byte-order mark, so Arabic text, m² and accented characters all open properly in Excel rather than as a screen of question marks.
Ground conditions, authority approvals, labour accommodation and haul distance differ enough across the region that one Gulf rate is a fiction. BillMate records the location on every rate.
General observations about how these markets differ, not price data. BillMate publishes no Gulf rate index — your library is the price basis, and we explain why.
| Description | Unit | Rate | Location | Priced | Source | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bored cast in-situ piles, 600 mm diameter, through made ground | m | AED 268 | Dubai — Al Barsha | 2026-06 | Priced tender | Current |
| Ditto, same specification | m | AED 241.50 | Abu Dhabi | 2026-05 | Priced tender | Current |
| Reinforced concrete C40/20 sulphate-resisting in pile caps | m³ | AED 531.81 | Dubai — Al Barsha | 2026-06 | Own build-up | Current |
| Blockwork, 200 mm hollow thermal blocks in external walls | m² | AED 118.40 | Sharjah | 2026-04 | Subcontract quote | Current |
| Two-coat spray-applied bituminous tanking to substructure | m² | AED 96.50 | Dubai — Al Barsha | 2026-06 | AI draft | Unverified |
| High-yield reinforcement, cut, bent and fixed | t | AED 3,420 | Ras Al Khaimah | 2024-10 | Priced tender | Stale |
Two entries here are the same pile specification priced in different emirates, and they sit side by side rather than averaging into a number that is true nowhere. One is an unverified AI draft and says so. One is flagged stale at 12 months. Illustrative rates, not market evidence — how the library works.
No subscription, no renewal date, no per-seat fee and no sales call.
2 active projects. Taking-off, rate build-ups, provisional and prime cost sums and the whole rate library. No sign-up, no card. You cannot export the bill.
Start 2 projects freeOne authorised user, up to 3 devices. Unlimited projects, client-ready PDF and CSV export, on-screen measurement, AI assistance, core updates to version 1.x.
Buy Pro — $59Up to 5 authorised users and 10 devices on one shared licence key. Everything in the Pro licence. Each person works on their own projects; there is no simultaneous collaborative editing.
Buy Team — $199On the price: Charged in US dollars. This page shows the Global price because you are reading the Global page, and both buttons open the Global 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. Your card is billed in dollars and your bank applies the dirham, riyal or dinar conversion, so the local amount you are debited follows the rate on the day.
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.
2 projects free, no sign-up, and the whole rate library included.