Book excerpt: Spon's Landscape and External Works Price Book 2004 offers the only comprehensive source of information for detailed external works and landscape costs. It covers all the items to be found in hard and soft landscape contracts and is therefore an indispensable reference book for quantity surveyors, landscape architects and contractors - essential for compiling estimates, specifications, bills of quantities and works schedules. A full index and list of manufacturers and suppliers gives easy reference to all items. The L and E comes with a 'free' CDROM that enables the reader to view the entire book on screen, cut and paste prices into other tender documents, export to other major packages, perform simple calculations, index search, produce estimate and tender documents, adjust rates and data. This complete package means that Spon's Landscape and External Works Price Book 2004 is now better than ever and is a resource that no building firm, surveyor or architect should be without. New features for the easier-to-read 2004 edition include: information on, and incorporating, the new CIJC three year age agreement, effective from Monday 30th June 2003; additional plant items to reflect the increased mechanisation of site handling of materials; new paving and kerb items; additional measured rate items for work in small gardens; non-rigid constructions, pumps and rocks associated with water features.