Comments on: The Vital Skill Each Cost Estimator Should Master

By: Abdul Bari

Abdul Bari — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 16:15:30 +0000

As usual latest information i got cost estimating.

Thanks

By: Doina Dobre

Doina Dobre — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 17:56:30 +0000

In reply to Enrico Violato. Enrico, thank you for taking the time to leave your comments! Very thoughtful points!

By: Enrico Violato

Enrico Violato — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 17:52:42 +0000

Hi Doina, very good point; In my short experience with cost and construction industry I realize (thanks to the senior professional I met along the way) one very important believe about man-hour detail cost estimating methodology: that you can do it only if, as you said, you can play the mental movie of the detail activity you want to estimate, then you sum up the different and multiple activities and you will have your man-hours and number of workers needed, after that you have to level the number of workers, since you cannot hire and fire the workers every changing week; To play the mental movie you have only two options: or you saw with your eyes that activities performed in the past or you can ask to someone that saw that activity to describe to you that mental movie; and the only person that can describe to you the mental movie activity is the site manager/ site superintendent that performed the same activity several time; I remember a senior superintendent with long beard and cap I worked with, he knew exactly how much time and how many workers he needed to install 500sqm of table form for forming, and given this information, time and nr of people for a given quantity you can estimate properly and infer the manpower unit rates cost and productivity; See you. I wish you a good day.

By: Priya

Priya — Sat, 03 Dec 2016 00:29:45 +0000

Hey, I am a freshman in college and was looking into cost estimating. I’m not entirely sure if this is the job for me so I was looking into shadowing a cost estimator for a day. Since I wasn’t successful in finding a cost estimator to shadow, I thought I could email one and get some advise and details. What do you think makes a good cost estimator? How do I know if this is the job for me? Thank you in advance for any advance you can give me.