Every contractor keeps prices somewhere: a notebook, a WhatsApp thread with a supplier, a spreadsheet from 2023 that three people have edited. The problem is never that the prices do not exist. It is that nobody knows how old they are.
Age is the field that matters most
A rate without a date is unusable. You cannot tell whether it is a bargain or a liability, and you certainly cannot defend it to a client. Every material line should carry the date it was last confirmed and the supplier it came from.
| Age of rate | Treat it as | Action before quoting |
|---|---|---|
| 0–30 days | current | use it |
| 31–60 days | ageing | confirm on volatile items — cement, steel, fuel-linked haulage |
| 60 days + | stale | re-quote with the supplier before it goes in an estimate |
A twenty-minute monthly routine
- 1.Sort your materials by date last updated, oldest first.
- 2.Take the top twenty. They are almost always the same categories: cement, reinforcement, aggregates, roofing, tiles.
- 3.Send one message to each of two suppliers per category. Two quotes is enough to spot a move.
- 4.Update the rate, the supplier and the date. Note the delivered price, not the yard price.
- 5.Flag anything that moved more than 5% so it gets checked on live estimates.
Price by region, not by country
A national average is a useful backstop and a poor basis for a quotation. Cement in Tamale is not cement in Tema, and aggregate cost is dominated by distance from the quarry. Where you hold a supplier price for the city you are building in, use it; fall back to a regional figure only when you have nothing better, and show clearly which one you used.
Priority order worth adopting
- 1.A project-specific price you have already negotiated for this job.
- 2.Your own current supplier price for that city.
- 3.Your own supplier price for the region.
- 4.A regional reference price.
- 5.A national average — as a placeholder that must be replaced before issue.
The discipline is not really about prices. It is about knowing, at the moment you send a quotation, exactly which numbers you trust and which ones you have guessed.