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Quantity Surveyor
Astrid Collective Ltd, Goffs Oak, Hertfordshire — hybrid (office, London sites, and home)
Rate: Competitive, depending on experience. Full-time, permanent
About us
Astrid Collective is a commercial fit-out and joinery contractor working predominantly across London. We build pubs, bars, restaurants, and hospitality venues, as well as retail, office, and health and wellness projects. Recent and current work includes a restaurant in Covent Garden, a pub conversion in Canary Wharf, a project at the Emirates Stadium, and five sites for a repeat restaurant client.
Projects typically run from around £50,000 up to £800,000. Turnover is approximately £4 million.
We design, manufacture, and install our own bespoke joinery.
We are a small, close team, supported by a regular on-site workforce. Everyone here mucks in and supports each other across roles. If you want to be one specialist among fifty, this is not the job. If you want visibility of the whole business and a genuine say in how it runs, it might be.
The role
This is a full-cycle commercial role. You will own the commercial side of a project from the first take-off through to the final account and the post-completion review, working alongside our estimator, project managers, and site managers.
It is a role with real breadth. You will be pricing work in the morning and defending a variation in the afternoon.
Pre-contract
- Prepare quantity take-offs from architects' and consultants' drawings
- Produce internal bills of quantities and client-facing schedules of work
- Issue subcontractor enquiries, level and compare returns, and interrogate scope gaps
- Build up rates from first principles — labour, materials, plant — and maintain and improve our rate library
- Price preliminaries, and apply overhead and profit with a clear rationale
- Identify commercial risk in tender documents and draft the assumptions, exclusions, and qualifications that go with our price
- Raise tender queries with design teams before we commit to a number
Live cost control
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- Convert the winning estimate into a working project budget with clear cost headings
- Maintain a live cost report on every project, tracking committed cost, actual cost, and forecast cost against budget
- Place subcontract orders and manage subcontractor accounts, applications, and payments
- Reconcile site records — labour returns, delivery notes, plant hire, and workshop time — against what has been ordered and paid
- Produce monthly cost-value reconciliations and forecast the final cost of each job
- Prepare interim valuations and applications for payment to the client
- Monitor project cash flow and flag issues while there is still time to act on them
- Report the commercial position of each project clearly enough that a site manager and a director can both act on it
Variations and change control
- Maintain a live variation register on every project, so nothing depends on anyone's memory
- Spot change as it happens, whether it arrives as a formal instruction, a revised drawing, or a conversation on site
- Issue the notice promptly and in writing, before the work is carried out wherever possible
- Price variations properly from contract rates and first principles, including any effect on programme and preliminaries
- Chase and secure client agreement rather than letting variations accumulate unresolved
- Work with site managers and the joinery workshop so the records supporting a variation are captured at the time, not reconstructed months later
- Assess subcontractor variation claims, test entitlement, and make sure anything we concede downstream can be recovered upstream
- Administer the contract throughout, including notices, correspondence, and record-keeping
Completion and beyond
- Negotiate and agree final accounts, both with the client and down the supply chain
- Manage retention release and defects-period commercial matters
- Run a post-completion commercial review on every job: what we priced, what it actually cost, and why
- Feed real outturn data back into the rate library so the next estimate is better than the last
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What we are looking for
Essential
- Demonstrable UK experience in a quantity surveying or commercial role within main contracting
- Genuine take-off capability — whether that is Bluebeam, CostX, Excel, or a scale rule, we care that you can measure accurately and explain how you got there
- Post-contract experience: valuations, variations, and final accounts, not just tendering
- Working knowledge of JCT contracts
- Comfortable on a live London site and talking directly to trades, not only working from a desk
- Right to work in the UK
Desirable
- Commercial fit-out experience, ideally hospitality, retail, or leisure
- An understanding of joinery and how bespoke manufacture is priced
- A QS degree, HNC, or equivalent qualification; MRICS or working towards it
- Experience of small, fast-moving projects running concurrently
The person
We are less interested in a perfect CV than in how you think. What matters to us:
- You are generally positive and hard working
- You are commercially assertive. You notify a variation on the day it happens, not at the final account.
- You are curious about better ways of working. We use AI across our estimating and project records and we are still developing it. You do not need to be an expert — you need to be someone who will dig in and try things rather than either ignoring it or trusting it blindly.
- You want the whole picture. In a team this size you will see everything from first enquiry to handover.
- You are straightforward with people. We would rather hear bad news early.
What we offer
- Rate: Competitive depending on experience
- Hybrid working: A mix of our Goffs Oak office, London sites, and home where it suits
- 25 days holiday plus bank holidays
- Company pension
- Genuine progression — we are growing, and this role has scope to develop further
- Direct access to the MD and real influence over how the business is run
To apply
Send your CV to info@astriddab.com or apply through this listing.
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