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 culvert installation. We want to consider the activity to include the trench excavation, culvert pipe laying and trench backfill. In the picture below, we can see the crew composition, production rate, manhours per unit, composite crew labour and equipment rates and the total composite crew rate.
Using the rates above, we will calculate the total item crew and man-hours, item labour and equipment costs. It looks simple enough, but this is not the case if we do not have access to a reliable database. And even when we do have a solid database, we still need to pay attention to what data we compare. For benchmarking costs for example, it is satisfactory to use the total composite crew rate. To develop the cost estimate though, we need more insight. We need the crew composition.
The Challenges We Most Often Face Are:
- How to determine the crew composition,
- How to determine whether it would be more appropriate to use the crew for pricing at composite activity level, or simple task,
- How to determine the most realistic production rate,
- How to benchmark composite crew rates against existing actual cost data.
- How to convert the cost estimate into the project budget to reflect the actual crew composition.
Labour and equipment costs are at the top of the cost overruns for construction companies. Using careful cost estimating and project budgeting will reduce the risk of the project being over budget.
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I am still unclear about the productivity rate you used above.
i understand that by using 5 people team we can achieve 4m/hour & it will take 2.5hrs to complete the whole job.
How did u get cost per unit???
as per my understanding hourly cost of each team member will be multiplied with 2.5hrs to get the final cost of manpower.
Kindly clarify