• Is the construction time less than the contract time?
• What is the construction time to determine any supervision costs?
• What is the impact of any liquidated damages?

With Hard Dollar Project Cost Management software creating a pre-bid schedule is fast. Hard Dollar has the Cost Breakdown Structure that you determined, so all that is necessary is to send it out to a schedule system. The only time involved is in setting up a schedule with all the activities. Since Hard Dollar has the activities (Cost Items), the “setup” of data is already done.

A very preliminary schedule can be created with just the Level One (higher level of Cost Items) items. In just a few minutes, the linking can be done, and a rough schedule created. Instead of taking days, just a few minutes is needed.

The impact is to have a more complete picture of the job and all of its costs, so better decisions can be made before the proposal (tender) is submitted.

Click here to read the full press release.

Click here to read the full press release.

How detailed that planning process becomes during the estimating stage depends on numerous factors, including the time available to prepare the estimate, the value of the project, and its potential risk and impact (positive or negative) on the organization.

But regardless of how much planning is done during the estimating process, firsthand experience with thousands of estimators over the past twenty years indicates there is even greater variance in how much of the estimator’s planning process is captured so that it can be leveraged downstream.

To many organizations, “the estimate” is simply the collection of final numbers arrived at as a result of the estimating exercise. But the real value of the estimator’s work is the thought process that led to those final numbers. Capturing that thought process as a model – with all of its associated variables – streamlines everything that comes after the estimate. Producing resource plans and schedules, performing “what if?” scenarios, and evaluating project changes are just three examples of tasks that are greatly streamlined through access to the estimator’s model.

All of which explains why Hard Dollar’s estimating module is called “Work Planning & Estimating.”

When it comes to large engineering and construction projects, most estimators will categorize their approach in one of two ways:

1. Bottom up (also called “Detail” or “Resource-driven”). With this approach, the estimator breaks the project into distinct line items, and then breaks those line items into smaller, distinct line items, and so on, until he or she arrives at the component (or resource) level – the level of detail at which the price of the components is relatively consistent across projects. For example, the cost of two recent bridges is going to vary wildly based on numerous project-specific factors, but the cost of an hour of a carpenter will be fairly consistent across those projects. Further, the man-hours expended by that carpenter to form a single square yard of a bridge deck will also be fairly consistent across projects. So, once you’ve modeled the hourly cost of the carpenter and the production rate for forming a deck, estimating the cost of a distinct line item called “Form bridge deck” is only a matter of identifying the size of the deck. Add that to other line items such as “Pour deck” and “Strip deck”, and you’ve got yourself a bottom up estimate.
2. Top down (also called “Parametric”). This approach typically relies on cost histories from past projects, and knowledge of the specific parameters of those projects. Using the previous example, you could look at your previous bridge projects and determine that there are correlations between the cost of the bridge and key factors such as the size and the primary material used. In other words, all things being equal, if the new bridge is 10% larger than the last, its top down cost estimate might be 10% higher. While this approach can be fast, it is less likely to uncover potential cost-eating dangers such as challenging site conditions or fluctuations in raw material costs.

The practical reality is that most companies – and most projects – have a place for both approaches. If you’re doing a conceptual estimate for an early-stage project, top-down may be the only approach possible. And even later-stage estimates might involve a mix of items, some estimated top-down and others bottom up. Of course, more and more project owners are asking for the back-up – the detail behind the numbers. So if you’re not already using a bottom up approach, it’s time to start thinking about it.

Fortunately, Hard Dollar software fully embraces both methods.

May 29, 2009 – Scottsdale, AZ & Beirut Lebanon – Hard Dollar Corporation, the category creator and leader in Project Cost Management systems announced that through the Hard Dollar Reseller “Collaboration Management and Control Solutions (CMCS),” international industry leader “The Contracting and Trading C.A.T. Group of Companies,” has selected the Hard Dollar solution to provide 5D-BIM project controls throughout its global operations.

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• Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS)
  This value shows how much money should have been spent to accomplish the work performed on a project to date. This is the essence of earned value, as it reflects the value of the project put in place to date.

• Estimate At Completion (EAC)
  This value shows the current forecasted cost at completion, based on the cost to date and the work remaining. When graphed over time, this value shows the owner of the project the expected spend level, which can be matched to budget levels to ensure adequate funding is available for the project.

Many estimating and scheduling software packages are adding features to address earned value, but currently Hard Dollar is the only application that can dynamically link cost estimates to Microsoft Project and Primavera schedules. This live, two-way integration between cost and schedule can reduce the time and effort spent on earned value calculations by 50% to 90%.