BOQ in a tender: the bill of quantities, explained
BOQ (Bill of quantities). The bill of quantities: the itemised list of what the buyer wants supplied or built, with quantities and units, against which a bidder quotes rates.
Checked against its sources on 23 September 2026.
What it tells you that the title does not
A tender title is written by the buyer in a hurry and is often generic: supply of electrical items, repair of building. The BOQ is where the actual items, quantities and units are, and it is the only honest answer to whether this tender is for something you make or install.
It is also where scale shows. Two tenders with the same title can differ by an order of magnitude in quantity, and the BOQ is where that is visible before you open the rest of the document.
BOQ on GeM
A GeM bid carries a BOQ title, a primary category and a total quantity, and the bid document lists the items. Where the buyer has raised a custom bid for services, the item list can be one long entry, which looks wrong and is not: that genuinely is one item.
Why a match should be checked against it
A keyword that fires on a listing can fire on the wrong thing: a cable tray is not a cable, and a solar plant maintenance contract is not a solar plant. Checking that the matched term actually appears in the bid document, in the BOQ title or the item list, is what turns a keyword hit into a tender worth reading.
- Read next:
- What does document verification mean?
Where ScanX reads this for you
ScanX records the exact span that caused each match and the field it was found in. For a GeM bid, a match stands only if the bid document mentions the term; ScanX does not estimate an L1 range from portal data.