Overcoming Productivity Challenges in the Heavy Civil Construction Industry

by John Sheedy John is a product manager for B2W Software. He has had a leadership role in the development of the company’s specialized B2W Track element for equipment maintenance and repairs, and the B2W Schedule element for resource scheduling and dispatching. Real-Time Performance Tracking for Field Data Collection and Analysis The heavy civil construction industry […]

Unit Rates for Cost Estimating – Six Easy Steps to Build All-inclusive Unit Rates

All-inclusive Unit Rates [thrive_headline_focus title=”Definition” orientation=”left”] A few readers asked how to build the all-inclusive unit rates. The easiest way to explain it is to start by defining it. In one short sentence, an all-inclusive unit rate includes all costs and markups that we want to recover when we use/charge that specific unit rate.  

Cost Estimate Planning, or not?

[thrive_headline_focus title=”Cost Estimate Planning. Do you have a plan?” orientation=”left”] Cost estimate planning is an activity that I always take it very seriously. I know, some of the projects we work on are small(er) and do not justify implementing a full cost estimate development plan. For those projects, I implement the steps which I consider […]

Composite Crew Rates in Cost Estimating

What Are Composite Crew Rates Detailed cost estimating best practice for determining labour and construction equipment costs is to determine the composite crew rates. The composite crew rates are the averages weighted to account for: labour and equipment cost and units, per activity/task unit of measure. Let’s say we want to determine the costs of […]

The Vital Skill Each Cost Estimator Should Master

What and Why? Throughout my 30+ years in the construction industry, many of those in the cost estimating field, I met great estimators and estimators lacking the confidence to say: Yes, I calculated this cost, this is how I did it, and this is the benchmark data to prove it. My curiosity was always to […]