Costing · DSR 2023 · SOR · Factors

Cost estimation software — DSR, PWD SOR and rate analysis

This is the pricing half of CivilOS: a free cost estimation software that decides what a measured quantity is worth. It answers the three questions anybody asks about a rate — where is it from, who issued it, and when was it in force — and it prints the arithmetic that turned a schedule figure into the figure on your abstract.

It is meant for the estimator pricing a departmental or tender bill against a government schedule, the contractor checking whether a quoted rate is defensible, and the engineer who inherited a spreadsheet full of bare numbers with no idea which year they came from.

What you can do

Feature	What it does	Export
CPWD DSR 2023 library	3,047 priced items from the Delhi Schedule of Rates 2023 (Civil), Volumes 1 and 2, searchable by code, sub-head or wording, each carrying its published preamble, unit and rate	into the BOQ → .xlsx
State PWD schedule	A separate schedule you maintain per state, so a Maharashtra job and a Telangana job are not fighting over one rate table	.xlsx via BOQ
Upload your own BSR	Reads the rate lines off a schedule page you upload as Excel, PDF or a photograph, into a draft you confirm	—
Market rates	Local enquiry rates held beside the schedule rate, with a switch that says which basis the bill is currently priced on	.xlsx via BOQ
Rate analysis	A unit rate built from labour, material and plant coefficients at your own prices, with overhead and contractor's profit on top; every coefficient carries its basis	.xlsx
Cost index & escalation	Multiplies a base rate to the city and then to the year, returning the chain so the remarks column can print it	on the bill remarks
Rate provenance	Stores source, issuing authority, document reference, date in force and a note against each rate — and keeps the history when the rate is revised	on-screen audit
Rate audit	Lists which rates have no stated source and which schedules are old enough to be superseded	on-screen
Take-off matching	Offers the closest schedule items for a measured row and refuses the match outright when the units disagree	into the BOQ

The DSR 2023, shipped as data

A bill is not a real document until its items are the authority's items, quoted at the authority's rates, under the authority's codes. So the whole schedule ships — code, sub-head, sector, the published preamble, the leaf description, the unit and the rate — and is fetched only when you open the cost screen, because somebody opening the scheduler should not pay to download a rate library they are not using.

Two absences are decisions, not gaps. Sub-head 1, carriage of materials, is not included: it is a matrix of rates by material and lead distance, not a list of items with a unit and a rate, and flattening it would produce plausible-looking lines nobody can bill. And item text stays in English even though the interface speaks 24 languages, because a schedule item's wording is part of the contract and a machine-translated specification clause would be confidently wrong in places nobody would check.

Moving a rate to the place and the year

An Indian estimate rarely uses a schedule rate raw. A CPWD rate is adjusted by the published cost index for the city, and a rate from an older schedule is escalated to the present. Both are multiplications, and both are shown:

6,500 × 1.16 (Mumbai index 116) × 1.06 (escalation +6%) = 7,992

The order is deliberate — the index moves the rate to the place, escalation moves it to the time. The product would be the same either way, but the chain reads the way an estimator explains it out loud. The city indices shipped with the app (Delhi = 100 as base, fifteen cities) are CPWD-style sample values kept as plain data so they can be corrected; the published index for the relevant year governs, and the screen says so.

Rates are stored as records rather than bare numbers, and each key keeps its history, because schedules are revised annually and a bill must cite the schedule that was in force on the day it was priced — not whatever is current when someone reopens the file two years later.

How to price a project

Open the cost screen. The DSR library loads on demand; the app itself runs in the browser with nothing to install.
Pick the basis. Official schedule, or local market rates. The choice is explicit, and the bill states which one it is priced on.
Load your schedule. Search the DSR 2023 by code or wording, or fill a State PWD schedule by typing rates or uploading a rate page for reading.
Record where each rate came from. Authority, document reference and date in force. This takes thirty seconds and is the difference between a rate you can defend and one you cannot.
Build up anything the schedule does not cover. Open rate analysis, set the local prices of cement, sand, aggregate, steel and the daily wages, adjust the coefficients, and add overhead and profit.
Set the factors. Choose the city index and, if the schedule is from an earlier year, the escalation percentage. Watch the chain update on a worked sample rate before you commit.
Run the rate audit. Clear anything flagged as unsourced or stale before the numbers leave your screen.
Price the bill. The BOQ reads these rates. From there the priced schedule, the sanctioned estimate pack and the running account bill all take their money from the same audited source.

What CivilOS does not do

It does not keep rates up to date for you. There is no connection to any government portal. The shipped State SOR and market rates are samples to be replaced with the schedule in force for your work and your financial year.
It does not price carriage of materials. DSR Sub-head 1 is a lead-distance matrix and is deliberately left out rather than flattened into unbillable lines.
It does not design or analyse anything. No structural solver, no load calculation, no member sizing — CivilOS prices what a qualified engineer has already designed.
It does not size MEP services. You can draft services with MEP symbols on discipline layers, but there is no duct, pipe, cable or load calculation engine.
It does not do 4D or 5D simulation. Money and programme live in the same product but are not fused into a cost-loaded animation.
It will not guess a rate for you. When a measured row's unit disagrees with the schedule item's unit, the row arrives unpriced with the reason shown, rather than multiplying an area by a volume rate.

Where a browser cost estimator fits

Desktop and server-based costing packages in this category are typically bought for scale: a rate library administered centrally across an organisation, subscription feeds of updated schedules, resource-loaded programmes, subcontract comparison, and cost reporting rolled up across a portfolio of live contracts. Estimating departments that price dozens of tenders a month need that infrastructure, and CivilOS makes no attempt to provide it.

A free browser tool answers a narrower question well: what is this quantity worth, and can I prove it? It is useful when you need the DSR in front of you without hunting a PDF, when a site office must price a variation the same afternoon, when a student or a small practice needs to learn how a rate analysis is actually built up, and when an inherited spreadsheet of bare numbers has to be turned into rates with an authority against each one. Plenty of offices will use a licensed package for the contract of record and a browser tool for the fast, checkable working figure — the two are not in competition.

Questions people ask

Which schedule of rates does CivilOS include?

The CPWD Delhi Schedule of Rates 2023 (Civil), Volumes 1 and 2, is shipped as data: 3,047 priced items, each with its published code, sub-head, description, unit and rate. It is fetched only when you open the cost screen, so nobody pays to download a schedule they are not using.

Can I use my own State PWD SOR or BSR?

Yes. You can keep a separate schedule per state and type or paste rates into it, and you can upload a rate page as Excel, PDF or a photograph to have its rate lines read in. Read-in rates land as a draft you confirm, and you record the authority and date in force against them.

How do the cost index and escalation work?

The base rate is multiplied by the city cost index to move it to the place, then by an escalation percentage to move it to the year. The chain is printed rather than applied silently, so a remark can read 6,500 × 1.16 (Mumbai index 116) × 1.06 (escalation) = 7,992 and a checker can reproduce it.

Are the rates in CivilOS current?

The DSR 2023 items carry the rates published in that schedule. The State SOR and market rates shipped with the app are samples for you to replace, and the city cost indices are CPWD-style sample values. CivilOS does not fetch rates from any government portal, so the published schedule in force on your billing date always governs.

Will it tell me the cost per square foot of a building?

Not as a thumb rule. CivilOS builds a cost from measured quantities multiplied by sourced rates, and you can divide that total by your built-up area yourself. It deliberately does not ship a per-square-foot benchmark, because such figures swing with specification, location and year and cannot be defended in a tender.

Can it price a drawing automatically?

It can take quantities off a drawing and propose the schedule items that fit each measured row, offering the closest candidates for you to choose from rather than picking one silently. If the unit of the measured row and the unit of the schedule item do not match, the match is refused and the row arrives unpriced with the reason shown.

Is the DSR item text available in Hindi?

The interface runs in 24 languages including Hindi, Telugu and Tamil, but schedule item descriptions stay in the published English. A schedule item's wording is part of the contract, and a translated and back-translated specification clause is a dispute waiting to happen.

Open the free cost estimator → DSR 2023, State SOR, market rates, rate analysis and factors

Draft for checking. Rate analysis coefficients follow common Indian practice but vary with specification, lead, lift and local conditions, and sample rates and indices shipped with the app are placeholders. Price against the schedule your authority has actually notified for the relevant financial year, and have a qualified engineer verify the priced estimate before it is issued.