PlanIt Estimating · Commercial Tenders & Bills of Quantities

Value engineer an option by swapping products

What does this do?

Value engineering swaps a product on an option and shows the effect straight away: the client saving, your cost saving, gross profit and margin, plus the waste change once the roll optimiser reruns. Swaps come from your EPOS catalogue or a manual entry.

How to use it

  1. Open the tender and, on the Options tab, press Open on the option you want to engineer. This is usually a duplicate of the baseline, not the baseline itself.
  2. Press the ⚖ Value Eng. tab. If you opened the baseline, press Duplicate it as a VE option and work on the copy.
  3. Set your Margin floor %. PlanIt warns you if a swap takes the margin below it.
  4. For each flooring type, choose Swap to an alternative… from your catalogue and press Apply, or press Manual swap… to type a product and price.
  5. Press ▶ Re-calculate when asked so the optimiser reruns and the waste consequence is real.
  6. Read the cards: Client saving, Cost saving, Gross profit and Margin, each measured against the baseline. The component table shows baseline versus this option line by line.
  7. On a bill-priced option, swaps work per bill item and the summary shows the rate and margin movement instead of waste.
Questions this guide answers
  • How do I show a cheaper alternative on a tender?
  • What does value engineering do?
  • How do I swap a product on a tender option?
  • What is the margin floor?

Last updated 2026-09-03 · Direct link for this feature