Book excerpt: Prices this year are all over the place. But what’s happening in detail? Now in its 29th edition, Spon's External Works and Landscape Price Book 2010 offers the only comprehensive source of information for detailed external works and landscape costs. All the items to be found in hard and soft landscape contracts are covered, forming an indispensable reference book for quantity surveyors, landscape architects, contractors and Local Authority managers – essential for compiling estimates, specifications, bills of quantities and works schedules – and no matter what the size of the project being undertaken. As well as a number of new approximate estimates items, this edition includes the following new Measured Works items: Sustainable urban drainage systems Sustainable pavings, and bases for sustainable pavings Step construction (in brick, in-situ concrete, slab, timber and stone) Pergolas Planting transplants (preparations and planting) And the definitive listing of common landscape chemical applications has been revised to comply with recently introduced legislation. All the standard features that you expect from Spon’s External Works & Landscape Price Book remain: Material and measured work prices covering contract items from preliminaries and site clearance and encompassing every external works activity with full breakdowns into labour, materials and other components. Detailed guidance on wage rates, landscape consultants’ fee scales. Extensive Approximate Estimates section for rapid spot estimating. Updated, free of charge, every four months – see enclosed card to register. Updates are available online at www.pricebooks.co.uk Buyers of this 2010 edition can make a free internet download of Spon’s External Works & Landscape price data, which will run to the end of 2010 and: Produce estimate and tender documents Generate priced or unpriced schedules Access Spon’s Approximate Estimates rate data, as well as the Measured Works data Adjust rates and data and enter rogue items Export schedules into Excel Carry out an index search This year, for the first time, the download includes a versatile and powerful ebook.