Deep dive into the intricate process of creating detailed levels for your project estimates, including the delicate balance of what constitutes too much information and what forms a suitable rolled-up unit cost. Unpack the complexities of fully detailed category costs from labor to equipment, material, and subcontractor pricing.
Key Insights
- Project estimates can be broken down into different detail levels, from single unit costs to fully detailed category costs including labor, equipment, material, and subcontractor pricing.
- While granular costs provide extensive detail, it is essential to roll these costs up to the next level for a less cluttered estimate, maintaining a balance between too much information and a suitable rolled-up unit cost.
- Providing single unit costs for each cost category and their total unit costs offers more material and valuable information that enhances the readability and comprehension of the estimate.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
Let's talk about the detail levels that you can create from your estimate. We could have a single unit cost of a project, a single unit cost for individual elements, or we can divide the costs into cost categories, where they can then become very granular for each one of them. Keep in mind that if we get very granular with our costs, we can always roll those costs up to the next level, so that the estimate doesn't look too busy.
But understand that any rolled up cost usually has several layers of granular detail inside of it. Our last option is fully detailed category costs that would also include crews, resources as they relate to labor rate tables, city cost indexes, productivity, difficulty factors, and this is just for labor alone. Equipment is similar, along with greater detail for material and subcontractor pricing as well.
Understand that we can get very granular with this if we decided to, but you have to find that sweet spot between what is too much information and what is a suitable rolled up unit cost. Make sure that anyone else can read your estimate and understand it with the information provided without giving too much more information that's not necessary. So, what detail level do we want for our cost categories in construction estimating? This is the method we'll be working with in this class in the provided estimate in the example.
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By showing more detail, by providing single unit costs for each of the cost categories, and then the total unit costs, provides much more material and much more information that can be utilized by anyone else reading the estimate.
