How to Extract Activity Costs and Quantities from the BOQ for Cost & Resource Loading

Most planners load cost into Primavera P6 as one lump sum per activity.

That's the mistake.

A real BOQ has dozens of line items mapped to a single activity — different block types, different walls, different rates. If you don't break it down first, your cost loading is just a guess dressed up as data.

Here's the actual workflow:

✅ Pull every BOQ line item tied to the activity — qty, unit, and rate, item by item

✅ Sum them into one true QTY and COST per activity

✅ Split that total across the floors or zones it spans — so each location carries its real share of cost and quantity

✅ Keep labor, qty, and cost as separate rows - so the schedule reflects manpower, not just money

Get this right, and your cost loading actually means something: traceable back to the BOQ, defensible to the client, and accurate enough to drive real decisions.

I walk through the full Excel breakdown — line by line — in this video