Tamil Nadu PWD Schedule of Rates 2025-26: One State Book, Three Volumes
Tamil Nadu publishes a single Schedule of Rates for all departments, effective 22 July 2025. PWD is Volume I, not a separate book. Where the official PDFs are, how item codes work, and the locality premiums that break estimates.
Search for a "Tamil Nadu PWD Schedule of Rates" and you will not find one, because Tamil Nadu does not publish a PWD schedule. It publishes one Schedule of Rates for the whole state government, and the Public Works Department is a section inside Volume I of it.
That single fact resolves most of the confusion around this document. The current edition is the Government of Tamil Nadu Schedule of Rates 2025-2026, and its title page carries the operative date plainly: with effect from 22.07.2025. It is not an April-to-March book that switched over at the start of the financial year — it took effect nearly four months in, which is why tenders floated in the first quarter of 2025-26 may still be priced against the previous edition.
The current edition, and where it actually lives
The three volumes are published on the Highways Department portal, not on a PWD site:
| Volume | Departments covered |
|---|---|
| Volume I | Public Works Department, Highways Department, Water Resources Department |
| Volume II | TWAD Board, CMWSSB, TNUHDB, HR&CE, Tamil Nadu Horticulture Development Agency |
| Volume III | Forests Department, TANGEDCO, TANTRANSCO |
The immediately previous edition, Schedule of Rates 2024-2025, sits on the same page — worth keeping to hand when you are reconciling an older estimate.
If you are looking for a "PWD SOR 2025-26 PDF download" and coming up empty, this is why: the file you want is Volume I, hosted under tnhighways.tn.gov.in.
Who sets the rates
The schedule is not drafted by any one department. Government Order G.O. (Ms) No. 3, Public Works (G2) Department, dated 14.03.2024 constituted a Schedule of Rates Committee whose members include the Engineer-in-Chief and Chief Engineer (General) of PWD, the same office in the Water Resources Department, the Director General of the Highways Department, the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, a Finance Department representative, and engineering directors from TWAD, CMWSSB, TANGEDCO and TNUHDB.
The preface records what the committee priced against: prevailing market rates, the Wholesale Price Index of the current year, the TANCEM rate for cement, the SAIL rate for steel, and five years of past data. The 2025-26 edition is not a uniform uplift of the old one — the preface states it "includes existing items, deletion of few items which are not in use, addition of new items, and merger of similar items." Item-by-item mapping from a 2024-25 estimate is therefore not safe to assume.
What is inside Volume I
Volume I runs to just under 400 pages. The PWD portion occupies roughly the first 310 and is organised into nine annexures:
| Annexure | Contents | Pages |
|---|---|---|
| I | Rates of Labour | 12–16 |
| II | Rates of Materials | 17–28 |
| III | Rates of Works | 29–63 |
| IV | Head Load | 64–65 |
| V (A) | Conveyance Table in Plains | 66–68 |
| V (B) | Conveyance Table in Hills | 69–71 |
| VI | Rates of Other Construction Materials | 72–211 |
| VII | Rates of Electrical Items of Works | 212–304 |
| VIII | Rates of Hire Charges for Plants & Machineries | 305–306 |
| IX | Rates of Prefabricated Concrete Structures | 307–310 |
The Highways Department section begins at page 311 and the Water Resources Department section at page 353. Three departments, one book, three different code spaces — which matters more than it sounds.
Item codes are department-scoped
Every entry carries a unique code "to be referenced during estimate preparation." PWD codes follow the structure A-1234, where the leading letter is the item type:
- L — Labour
- M — Materials
- W — Works
- C — Head Load and Conveyance
- H — Hire Charges
Highways codes prefix the department and add a category: HW-A1234, with E for Equipments alongside the five above. A W- code and an HW-W code are not interchangeable, and a BOQ line that cites one while the estimate was built from the other will not reconcile at evaluation.
Labour is priced per day by grade — Technical Assistant Grade-I (B.E. passed) at ₹1,430.00 per day, Grade-III (Diploma failed / ITI Civil passed) at ₹1,089.00, Wireman Grade-I / Electrician Grade-I at ₹971.00, all at the 2025-26 basic rate effective 22.07.2025.
The rates exclude GST
Each volume's title page states it carries basic rates excluding GST and other taxes. This is the single most common source of a Tamil Nadu estimate landing low. The scheduled figure is a pre-tax input, not a quotable price.
Locality premiums are where estimates actually break
The General Note allows percentage additions for difficult terrain, and they are large enough to dominate a bid. A selection from the 2025-26 edition:
- Kodaikanal — extra 40% on Rates of Labour, Rates of Works and Head Load; extra 25% over Rates of Materials.
- Yercaud and Yercaud Sub-Taluk, Boothamalai, Aranuthumalai, Sarugumalai and Thiruchengode Hills (Salem and Namakkal districts) — extra 25% on Rates of Labour, Materials, Works and Head Load.
- Jawadhu, Elagiri, Kalrayan, Nakkanamalai and Naickerneri Hills (Tiruvannamalai and Vellore districts) — extra 40% on Labour, Works and Head Load; extra 25% over Materials.
- Rameswaram Island — extra 25% on Labour, Works and Head Load.
- Other islands in Ramanathapuram district, and the Van, Kasuvar, Karaichalli and Vilankuchali islands of Thoothukudi district — extra 125% on Labour, Materials, Works, Conveyance Charges and Head Load.
- Tunnels — extra 15% on Labour and Works generally; for hydro-mechanical works, extra 75% on Labour, 40% on Works and 25% on Materials.
- Periyar Dam site under hanging condition — extra 150% on Rates of Labour. Other dam sites under hanging condition carry an extra 75% on labour, and only for maintenance and repair work.
A Kodaikanal building job priced off the plain base rate is not slightly under. It is under by the whole premium, before GST.
What this means for the TWAD schedule
Tamil Nadu's water utility previously published its own book, and we hold a searchable transcription of it: the TWAD Board Standard Schedule of Rates 2023-24, 914 rate items across 11 chapters, effective 23 January 2024. TWAD is now covered by Volume II of the unified 2025-26 schedule, so treat the 2023-24 book as the reference for work tendered while it was operative rather than as the current rate source.
Pricing against it
The work that consumes an estimator's day is not finding the PDF. It is deciding which volume and which department's code space applies to the tender in front of you, applying the right locality premium, and catching the items the schedule does not carry at all. The same discipline applies across states — Maharashtra's SSR is still on its 2022-23 edition while Tamil Nadu has moved twice in that time, and the state-by-state directory records which edition is current where.
If you are new to converting a schedule into a priced bill, how a schedule of rates differs from a bill of quantities and rate analysis in construction cover the mechanics, and CPWD's analysis of rates is the closest central-government analogue. Arched's estimation engine reads the tender, identifies the applicable schedule and edition, and flags the premiums and missing items before submission.
Editions and links change. The volume PDFs above are served from the Highways Department's content management system and their filenames may be reissued. Confirm the current edition and its effective date on the official source before bidding.