Construction Cost Estimation.

Construction cost estimate is not only about cost of the construction materials, wages machineries, construction period and profit margin. There are some more factor that need to be consider and inserted. Some of the items which was spell out inside the preliminaries and generally of the bill of quantities in the tender document should not be taken lightly.

construction cost estimation software

Part of the item that was usually inserted in by quantity surveyor are, insurances, Government Levy, As-built drawings, quality assurance and quality control work. Very often that I came across tenderer that price those item that is not reasonable, especially as-built drawings and quality assurance and quality control works. It was price well below the the actual or market rate. Building As-built drawings for instant, very often that it being price at a range of  5,000-10,000 (currency). Just imagine, for a complete and functional building, there are five (5) major components to make it fully function. The five major components are Civil works, Structural works, Architectural works, electrical works and mechanical works. With these five major works, means contractor need to produce five different set of as-built drawings. How much will each of this As-Built drawing will cost contractor in order for them to produce sets of proper As-built drawings ????. With the pricing range from 5,000 to 10,000, is it possible???



That is only part of the construction cost estimate which need to be consider. How about the environment monitoring, charges by council or authority, occupation safety and health, third party liability and may more?
Hence construction cost estimate shall be priced accordingly to avoid any cash flow difficulties once your are awarded with a project. 

Construction work and weather

SAFETY AND HEALTH FOR ENGINEERS

Construction site is a place where most of the works are performed at an open space or out-door. When we mentioned open space or out -door, all of the construction personnel that involved in construction activities are subject to weather condition. As every construction personnel know, when working out-door, each and every one of us will always want a good weather, especially moderate temperature on the day. In other words that day it is not a sunny day neither do it rainy day.

Regardless the weather condition, each of the situation having its own hazard towards health.

Below are some of the situation, Hazard and suggestion on how to manage the situation.

Weather Condition            Hazard                                         Management   

Raining                             Flu, Fever, Headache                   Do not work in rain.

Drizzling                              Flu, Fever,Slippery,                        Provide sheds ( if applicable) or/and 

                                         Fall from high place                      Avoid working at high location or/and

                                                                                            provide suitable PPE or

                                                                                            Do not work if it is drizzling

Strong Wind / Storm        Falling object,                               Do not carry out any activities below the 

                                                                                          group that working at higher location.

                                       Collapsed of Scaffolding               Evacuate or do not stay on scaffolding                                                                                                            platform during strong wind/storm.

Hot Weather                   Fainted and fall from high place          Worker rotation system,

                                     Heat stroke/Heat stress                     Provide Shades ( if applicable),

                                                                                             Ensure or provide drinks for workers

                                                                                             Provide and ensure the usage of suitable PPE

                                

WORK PROGRAM AND THE S CURVE

Every construction project will need a well documented WORK PROGRAM or Work schedule. It is as a guide for the construction players on When and how can they achieve the target Completion date. For Planners they are well verse with Work Program. There is lots of computer aided program that can be utilised to enable them to come out with a professional look of a work program. Some of the computer aided program are, Microsoft Project, Primavera, Esteem and may more. The most common are Primavera and Microsoft Project. For a small scale project, work program even can be produce by using Microsoft excel or Office.org.

Most of the work program software are designed in such a way that it can also produce the "S-CURVE"."S-Curve" is a graphical presentation which showing informations such as "Schedule S-Curve", "Actual S-Curve", dates, Percentage of work and may more. Normally this is a method that commonly used to show the overall progress of a project. On the S-Curve graph, we will see what is the value (either in terms of dollar and cents or percentage) of previous work achieve, target value, and progress on the month of reporting.

S-Curve and Work program are both related. Changes to Work Program might affect the S-Curve. S-Curve in actual fact is derive from the work program it self. Without work program, people can still produce S-Curve but the question is, is it tally with what we planned to do?

To those who are new on the planning work, Work Program, once it being amended, it might affecting informations which you want to show on your S-curve.

Usage of Request for information

What is Request for Information (RFI) in construction work? In construction works Request for information is a method that normally being applied at construction site to obtained certain information with regards to works issues. It is ranging from the construction drawings, site condition and may others site matters. Site Manager, Site supervisor, site engineer or any site technical assistant are among the common personnel that have been using the "Request For Information (RFI)" method or form as a way of communication to officially obtained any information which will affecting the construction works.

                                                              

This RFI is commonly being issued out by contractor to the consultant or client site representative once there is any doubts arise from unclear instruction, specifications, drawings or plans or even the locality of the proposed structure. When contractor write and issue out a  "Request for information", in actual fact, they already put it on record that they are having an construction related issue which might hindered them from starting the construction for certain work or structure. As such it is a proof that they already highlighting something which might cause delay in construction progress, extra  construction cost, safety issue, site conditions or it might be only a request to confirm the validity of a verbal instruction, construction drawings or plans that had given to them unofficially. 

                                                             

Client site representative shall not take the "request for information" lightly since it having its legal value. In some cases, client site representative might not be in the position to provide such information to the contractor site personnel. If such situation occurred, with the issuance of "request for information" by contractor site representative, they then can convey or redirect the matter to their respective department or person in-charge to get the valid response or answer.

In construction, the line of communication when using the "Request for information" is between contractor site personnel and client site representative. By looking to those two parties we can say that the usage of "Request for information" Form is mostly at construction site level. 

If we notice in the above paragraph, the words "mostly" was used, this is merely because "Request for Information" also sometimes being used between headquarters and site as an internal communication in the same organisation. However the usage of "Request for information is not limited only to those application but it can be customised to suit the needs of an organisation.