Estimating

Estimating enables you to arrive at the total estimated "cost" for a project.

Bidding enables you to distribute overhead costs, apply profit, and arrive at the "bid price" for a project.

Scheduling allows you to define schedules for a project and compute the resource demand, cash flow analysis, and return on investment analysis.

Inflation/Escalation Analysis enables you to specify a hierarchy of inflation indices that can be applied to the base cost of the estimate; together with the schedule, these indices compute the anticipated incremental cost associated with inflation. Additionally, you can define an escalation index, which can be applied to the bid price, and the payment schedule to compute the anticipated incremental revenue associated with escalation.

Multiple rate libraries can be set up for the different resources; these may be divided by geographic area or time period.

Group libraries are utilized to define company standard labor crews, equipment spreads, material assemblies, etc; these can be accessed through a single code and exploded into their component resources.

Historical costs can be stored either as unit costs or as productivity factors in the libraries.

Flexible account structure allows user-defined account numbering and summarization.

Multiple estimating methods include the following alternatives that can be used simultaneously:  work study analysis, productivity, unit price, and lump sum.

Multi-currency capability highlights and distributes a project's estimated cost in each currency.  A cost type can have up to nine rate components.  Each component can have a separate currency which is converted to the project currency utilizing a user-defined exchange rate.

Memo item entry enables you to flag each line in a cost item as either additive or non-additive to the total project estimate. This permits, for example, the inclusion of multiple subcontractor costs in analysis reports, while adding only the selected subcontractor quote to the project's total estimate.

Multiple bid preparation methods enable you to allocate estimated costs to bid items and apply your profit margin to arrive at a final bid price. This allocation procedure can be performed at any time during the preparation of the cost estimate.

Cash flow projection is achieved through the entry of a planned construction schedule; the system generates the cost, revenue, and resource demand curves for each user-defined period on a cash or accrual basis.

Inflation computations are available through utilization of the planned construction schedule, and user-defined inflation indices; the system can calculate the anticipated cost increment for inflation in each cost item.

Risk analysis calculations present the probable ranges of the estimated costs.  These statistics are achieved when you combine confidence levels and probable ranges for resource rates, quantity of work to be performed, and production rate.