Build an NRM1 order of cost estimate or elemental cost plan

What NRM1 is for

RICS NRM1 governs order of cost estimating and elemental cost planning for capital building works — the stage where you need a defensible number long before there are drawings detailed enough to measure properly. It works elementally: cost is allocated to group elements rather than to measured items, and refined as the design develops.

The group elements will be familiar: facilitating works, substructure, superstructure, internal finishes, fittings and equipment, services, prefabricated buildings, work to existing buildings, and external works — with main contractor's preliminaries, overheads and profit, project and design team fees, risk allowances and inflation handled separately rather than smeared across the rates.

How BillMate handles it

• An NRM1 elemental section template — a new project starts from the group-element structure rather than a blank sheet.
• The selected standard instructs the AI assistant in NRM1 wording and elemental thinking when you use it to draft.
• Percentage additions for preliminaries and contingency, defaulting to 3% and 5% and editable per project — the NRM1 habit of keeping these visible rather than buried in unit rates.
• Your rate library as the price basis, with each rate carrying the location and month it was priced — which is what makes an elemental rate defensible at all.
• The standard prints on the bill, so a reviewer knows which rules your figures follow.

What it does not do. BillMate holds no elemental cost data, no BCIS-style benchmarks and no published cost-per-m² figures. An NRM1 estimate in BillMate is priced from your historical rates and your own judgement. If you need published benchmark data you will subscribe to it separately.

NRM1 or NRM2?

NRM1 is the cost plan; NRM2 is the measured bill. A project usually passes through both, and BillMate will carry a project from an NRM1 elemental structure to an NRM2 measured bill by reorganising sections rather than starting again — though the measurement itself is, of course, new work.