The following is presented as a Construction Cost Estimating Guide for enabling owners and design-builders to gain visibility into actual local market labor, material, and equipment costs.
It has long been recognized that detailed line item estimating is a proven best practice for developing verifiable, objective, and actionable cost information for repair, renovation, maintenance, and new build projects. The core element is establishing an objective, verifiable, and current database of granular construction tasks based upon appropriate construction means and methods.
Detailed Line-Item Estimates
- Granular Task Descriptions:
- Estimates should break down the work into detailed, granular tasks, including quantities and specific descriptions.
- Local Market Data:
- Focus on using current, verifiable, and locally researched labor, material, and equipment costs.
- Focus on using current, verifiable, and locally researched labor, material, and equipment costs.
- Unit Pricing:
- Calculate costs per unit of measure (e.g., square foot, cubic foot, each) to facilitate accurate cost forecasting.
- Calculate costs per unit of measure (e.g., square foot, cubic foot, each) to facilitate accurate cost forecasting.
- Standardized Data Architecture:
- Use a robust data architecture such as expanded CSI Masterformat.
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Who, What, When, Where, How:Consider who will do the work, the work content (detailed specifications), the schedule, the location, and the methods of construction.
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Planning, Procurement, and Project Delivery:These processes significantly influence the final cost, so they should be factored into the estimation process.
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Team Knowledge and Productivity:Estimators need to understand the skills and capabilities of the people involved in the project, as productivity is directly linked to the team.
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Forget “Accuracy”:There is no such thing as a truly “accurate” cost estimate, but rather a focus on creating defensible, verifiable, and detailed estimates.
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Actionable Estimates:The estimate should be reliable and actionable, used to inform procurement and project delivery decisions.
UNIFORMAT is best used to express functional elements (assemblies) of a repair, renovation, maintenance, or new build project.
It provides a consistent approach that describes associated grouping of components across different projects by cost and function. It’s primarily use is in early stages of a project when a specific work scope (scope of work/SOW) has not been fully defined and critical characteristics of the projects not yet been determined.
MasterFormat, accounts for specific details of practical knowledge and terminology inclusive of means and methods and is primarily used at stages of a project where enough particulars and specific work scopes have been established, such as when a project is ready for procurement, or for the development of a reliable cost.
Procurement of any repair, renovation, maintenance, or new build should include appropriate detail and use objective, current, local market cost data.
Significant professional skill is required to properly use Masterformat and the extensive list of numbers and tittles of materials and methods that are available. Estimators must be able to search for and select proper items. The appropriate application and use of Masterformat, and subsequent creation of verifiable cost estimates is therefore somewhat limited to the availability of skilled estimators.
The use of current, locally reserached, granular cost data, organized using expanded Masterformat, provides 40%+ greater cost visibility than UNIFORMAT or alternative methodologies.