Estimating in Construction
Estimating in construction can really be considered the basis of all project processes, it has an impact on everything that subsequently follows during the project. The estimate leads to the budget preparation, which leads on to the project budget, then the actual quantities and costs and so on…
Estimating in construction is the process of assessing all the costs of a project to create a forecast of how much it is going to cost to build a structure for a project. The purpose of this estimate is for use by contractors when bidding for projects. This is one of the most important steps in the early stages of any project. But why exactly is estimating in construction important?
Winning the right projects: Accurate estimations allow you to do this. Bid too high and you lose the contract, bid too low and you lose money
Enabling project control: Estimates are the basis of creating a budget for the project, if the estimate is inaccurate then so will the budget. An inaccurate estimate will also negatively impact the ongoing project cost control and the initial project resource plan
Lessons learned: You need to be able to measure the accuracy of your estimate, if it was accurate then you know your methodology is correct. However, if the estimate was inaccurate you need to be able to identify why:
- Lack of scope?
- Wrong quantities?
- Incorrect rates?
Accurate estimates will improve your whole business performance. You’ll win more of the right projects, improve project control, predictability, and margins; Labor efficiency will be hugely improved by removing the laborious task of rekeying data – all of this will drive continuous improvement amongst your whole business.
Schedule of work
You may be wondering where Schedule of Work comes into this, in the SOW estimating module we can create new project estimates with the ability to have as many types, versions and revisions as you want. Resource cost rates such as labor and inventory parts can be held in IFS. We then have the option to summarise the resource requirements from the estimate and update the resource demand plans in the project module. What are the benefits of this?
- Integrated estimating
- Ability to measure estimate accuracy
- Integrated BIM Quantity take-off to support 5D BIM concept
- Integrated construction site progress tracking
- Physical quantity-based project earned value support
IFS Cloud lets general and specialty contractors, offsite and modular manufacturers and property and facility managers support the full asset lifecycle with best practice processes that deliver exceptional project control – all in one single solution.
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