Discover how to calculate construction costs with common materials using resources like Harvest Means and Bluebook. These publications provide detailed pricing data and a directory of subcontractors in your area, respectively.
Key Insights
- Harvest Means is a nationally recognized publication used by top ENR 400 companies that provides unit costs for virtually all construction materials. It also calculates the City Cost Index, offering project costs specific to different regions of the country.
- Bluebook is an excellent resource for finding subcontractors in your area. The platform, accessible online for no cost, has data on contractors and gives a good grasp on pricing in a specific locale.
- Warehouse stores like Home Depot are also valuable for pricing raw construction materials. These online stores provide information on costs and sizes, making them an essential part of a day-to-day pricing resource.
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So how do we find the construction costs of common materials? Harvest Means is a cost publication that could be obtained online or by purchasing a physical book. It's nationally recognized and it's used by more of the top ENR 400 companies around the nation that provides unit costs for just about anything you could conceive of in construction. And also it's quantified to a point where there might be small quantities or large quantities that are used and the prices are adjusted accordingly.
In other words, there's a lot of factors for the pricing. And basically the way they operate is they do surveys around the entire country where they identify costs directly with general contractors and subcontractors. Harvest Means will take all of this into account and will provide accurate pricing data that is specific to different parts of the country to create the City Cost Index.
The City Cost Index will define down to the city level how much projects should cost, not only to the overall unit costs but also broken down into labor, material, equipment, and subcontractor pricing, which is great because then you can have a project that you're building in Washington State and then also build the same project in Florida and see what the differences are on those costs. It could basically be affected by what materials are available in what parts of the country as well as weather conditions that sometimes affect the installation of the project or the product itself. If you're in New York City and you're purchasing so many cubic yards of concrete for your foundations, it'll be one price in New York City.
It'll be another price outside of the city. It'll be another price here in San Diego. And that could be because of the labor to put it in.
It could be because of the material costs to purchase it, as well as the equipment to mix it and place it, or all of them. So it's also a resource that is recognized by a lot of government institutions, including the United States Department of Defense, the Navy, GSA, to where they recognize these costs. And if you're going to provide pricing to the government on these projects, these construction projects, they recognize the published costs and therefore the price of your estimate or change order is quickly or more quickly recognized by the government agency that you're working with because everyone agrees to work off of that RS means published data.
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So you could say that it's somewhat of a standard in the industry, although it's not by any means the only resource to go to. Here's another one called Bluebook. So Bluebook is a subcontractor directory to find contractors in your area.
And the best way to find out more about Bluebook is to go online and go to thebluebook.com. It'll tell you how to get pricing at no cost from contractors. It has lists of contractors in your area. They have the best feel on the pulse of pricing in your area.
So look them up. It's free data that's available and there's also publications that may be available as well. But check them out online.
Highly recommend that this is part of your day-to-day pricing resource. So that leads us into vendors and warehouse stores. So just like looking up a subcontract, you could also call up a vendor and find out what pricing might be on that.
Warehouse stores is always a great resource. Go online, look up Home Depot or Lowe's. Home Depot probably has some of the better pricing for raw construction materials.
And it's also important that when you look at these prices, make sure that you're looking at the price and the size that you need. So just thinking out loud a little bit, if you're looking up sheetrock, just don't get a square foot cost of sheetrock. You might look and see what's available in that area.
Is it eight foot sheetrock? Do you have to buy it in 10 foot or 12 foot? So those might actually have various waste factors. We'll talk more about that as we get into some of the pricing. But those are some of the primary pricing resources that you'll come across and that you'll need to work with.
