Abstract

A brief scientific text can hardly offer detailed measures which may change the current highly unsatisfactory state of affairs as regards the degree of credibility of construction cost estimates in Poland. The paper describes multiple and diverse reasons for this situation. The Polish practice after the year 2000 proves that the market mechanism itself most likely will not be able to create an effective remedy for the problems of preparing construction cost estimates in Poland -- including priced bills of quantities for the needs of public procurement. Therefore, some dose of state intervention seems to be indispensable, as in other areas of the economy. The aim of this intervention should be, first of all:

-- to raise the status of quantity surveyors and the priced bill of quantities,

-- to consider the possibility of bringing some discipline to preparing priced bills of quantities in the public procurement system by imposing on the contracting authority a duty to specify more precisely the amount it intends to appropriate for financing of the contract. That calculation should be first of all more individualized, that is to greater than now degree take into account the conditions pf the specific time and place of implementation of a public construction contract.