Unit price quantity sheets, drafted item by item with the backup attached.

Each month somebody adds up what the field did: feet of pipe from daily reports, tons of stone and asphalt from load tickets, yards of cut and fill from the surveyor, and counts of manholes and inlets. They set that against the bid schedule, item by item, and work out what the month added, the quantity to date, and how close each item is to its bid quantity.

In the test, AI reads copies of those records and drafts the quantity sheet: each bid item with its unit, the quantity this period and to date, the documents behind it, and a mark on any item running past the bid quantity for your project manager. Nothing goes to an owner or into a pay estimate. Your reviewer checks the draft against the sheet you really sent.

Some bid items are never measured. Texas DOT's construction manual says an item marked as a plans quantity measurement item needs no field measurement: monthly estimates can rest on the plan quantity or an agreed formula, such as a portion of the plan quantity installed, and field checks may verify dimensions but shouldn't set the number. Florida's documentation manual gives the same warning and allows measurement only for field changes or plan errors. South Dakota's manual wants the reason for moving a plan quantity written into the change order, and rules out as-built and normal variation as reasons. A sheet built by adding up tickets gets those items wrong, so the draft reads each item's basis of payment before anything else.

Earthwork in progress is an estimate. South Dakota treats excavation as impractical to measure accurately while it's underway. Progress quantities are estimates with the method noted, and one final entry corrects the difference once the measured total is in. Cross sections and volume computations back that total, and a three-dimensional method or measurement in the hauling vehicle has to be accepted by the engineer and shown in the record. Your trucks carried loose yards, your surveyor measured in place, and the two won't agree without a shrink or swell factor your team chose. The draft labels each line as survey, ticket, count, dimension or estimate, and converts one into another only where your records show the factor.

Tickets rarely transfer straight across. In South Dakota's asphalt records, the quantity to the road is the ticket total minus whatever was entered as road waste. Salvaged mix stockpiled for later is measured in the pile and converted at a fixed factor of tons per cubic yard, and extra haul pays per ton-mile, with records of where the material came from and where it went. Washington's manual sets decimal places by the unit bid price and rounds at the first summation, a day's ticket total, instead of ticket by ticket. It also has an error on a signed source document fixed with a line through it, dated and initialed, while South Dakota corrects a paid quantity with a new entry for the difference. The draft follows your job's conventions and carries a correction forward as a correction.

An overrun is a contract event. Federal-aid contracts carry a standard clause, 23 CFR 635.109: a major item that grows past one and a quarter times its original quantity, or falls below three quarters of it, is a significant change, and any adjustment reaches only the portion beyond that line. Texas fixes its major items at bid, and its manual says neither a change order nor an overrun can make a bid item into one later. Federal construction contracts using the FAR clause on variation in estimated quantity set a narrower band, either side may demand an adjustment, and a time extension request is due in writing within 10 days of the start of the delay unless the contracting officer allows longer. Alabama's manual has project managers secure approval of an anticipated overrun before the work goes ahead, and reports quantity to date and percent complete by item each month. Every item at or past its bid quantity gets marked, and the clause stays for your project manager to read.

Your reviewer will read the backup column. Washington's manual says any payment has to be substantiated by project records at whatever stage the work has reached, and South Dakota asks for enough detail that someone unfamiliar with the project could follow how a quantity was arrived at. That is the standard your project manager will hold the draft to: does each line point to the daily report, ticket batch or survey file it came from, does last month plus this month equal the total, did idle items stay put, and did the draft hold any item it couldn't support?

With your reviewer's yes, the next month's sheets get drafted the same way for about 30 days.

Each sheet waits for your project manager, who approves it before it goes to an owner, an engineer or a pay estimate.

Any conversation about quantities stays with your team. Whatever comes next is a separate decision with its own fixed price, and monthly support once it runs.