Labour content: what it is and how it is worked out

What labour content is

Every unit rate in a price list is built up by adding labour, materials, plant hire and transport, plus overheads and the contractor's profit. The labour content is the share of the rate that pays for the work itself: plastering can run at 40–50%, supplying equipment can be under 10%. The Italian regional price lists state it item by item.

What it is for

Three very practical things. First: on public works in Italy the cost of labour has to be stated and shown separately in the tender documents, under D.Lgs. 36/2023. Second: on Italian building sites it is the basis of the labour congruity check (verifica di congruità della manodopera), which compares the labour cost declared with the cost expected for that type of work. Third: for the contractor it is a management figure — it says how big a gang the job needs.

How it is worked out across the bill

Item by item: value of the item × labour percentage = labour cost of that item. Added up across the whole bill it gives the total labour cost, which can also be expressed as an average percentage of the value of the works. The arithmetic is trivial, but it has to be done on hundreds of items: that is a job for software, not for a calculator.

How you do it with ComputoLab

The price lists ComputoLab makes searchable carry the labour content item by item; the program works out the labour content of the whole bill and produces the dedicated document in one click, together with the schedule of rates and the health and safety content.

Read also: How to prepare a bill of quantities · Published price books