What is a bill of quantities? Whether an entire building is to be constructed or only individual works are to be awarded, a tender is drawn up in order to find a company to carry out these activities. In addition to the architect's plans, the explanatory preliminary remarks, the schedules, etc., the key point of this is the description of the work to be carried out in a bill of quantities. This can be either functional or constructive. In the functional description, the end product and the requirements are defined qualitatively. This is based on the submission plans and possibly some key details. Put simply, the objective (e.g. the construction of a building) is specified, but the specific path to this objective is left to the contractor, while adhering to the specified visual and qualitative standards. Functional tendering offers flexibility for clients and bidders, but makes tendering and bid preparation more difficult due to the freedom of design. Ultimately, the bids received must be comparable. The constructive description is provided in a clear description of the individual works. As the construction of a building requires a vast number of individual work steps, standardised works have been developed for this purpose, e.g. the Standardised Service Description for Building Construction (abbreviated to LB-HB). These service catalogues describe the finished sub-works. The tenderer must then select the relevant items from this catalogue and specify the corresponding quantities (e.g. how many cubic metres of concrete of a certain quality are required, or how many weeks a crane will be used). The individual items are usually divided into labour and miscellaneous (material etc.) or delivery/installation and the unit price of the respective service item follows at the end of the item. Regardless of which type of description is chosen, the aim is to obtain comparable offers between the individual providers and to prevent subsequent claims for additional costs.