GB/T 50856-2024Standard for the measurement of general mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire services works (English PDF)

Foreword

This document was issued on 12 November 2024 by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the PRC, jointly with the State Administration for Market Regulation and takes effect on 1 September 2025.

It is a GB/T standard: recommended rather than compulsory, but it is the text a Chinese reviewer applies.

The document runs to 234 pages. The identification, the dates, the classification and the table of contents on this page are taken from the cover and the printed contents of the standard itself.

This standard was approved and issued by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People's Republic of China as Announcement No. 193 of 2024, dated 12 November 2024, and takes effect on 1 September 2025. On that date it supersedes the national standard GB 50856-2013 "Code of bills of quantities and measurement for general installation works", which is abolished.

The main content of the revision is as follows:

1. the item characteristics of some bill of quantities items have been revised, and content unrelated to the design documents deleted;

2. the units of measurement and the measurement rules of some bill of quantities items have been revised;

3. the work content of some bill of quantities items has been revised, so as to reflect the main construction operations;

4. the bill of quantities items for construction methods that have fallen out of use have been deleted, and items corresponding to current design and construction practice added;

5. some preliminaries items have been added and others removed, the measurement rules for the preliminaries have been revised, and trade preliminaries are now measured as a sum.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development is responsible for the administration of this standard.

The drafting organisations are the Sichuan Provincial Construction Cost Station, the Standards and Quotas Research Institute of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and the Sichuan Industrial Equipment Installation Group.

The document carries fourteen annexes, from Annex A to Annex P, one for each trade, and they occupy almost the whole of it: each gives the bill of quantities items for that trade, with for every item the code, the item name, the item characteristics to be described, the unit of measurement, the measurement rule and the work included.

1 Scope

GB/T 50856-2024 is the Chinese standard for measuring general installation works: the mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire services in a building or a plant. It is one of the documents Chinese construction contracts are actually built from, because in the Chinese system the bill of quantities is prepared to a national measurement standard rather than to a house rule, and this is that standard for the installation trades. It sets the general provisions and the terms, the rules for measurement, and the rules for compiling the bill of quantities including the preliminaries. The substance is in the fourteen annexes, one per trade: machinery installation, thermal equipment, static equipment and process metal structures, electrical, building intelligence, automatic control and instrumentation, ventilation and air conditioning, industrial pipework, fire services, water supply, drainage, heating and gas, telecommunications, painting, anti-corrosion and insulation, other and ancillary works, and the preliminaries. For each item the annex gives the code, the name, the characteristics to be described, the unit, the measurement rule and the work deemed included. The 2024 edition replaces GB 50856-2013. For a quantity surveyor, a contractor or an employer in China, this is the rule the bill is measured by.