Chris Curling, enterprise sales manager, EMEA at Bluebeam, explores how tech can improve cost efficiency and cost management during projects
It is no secret that construction is a low margin industry. Subject to heavy external price pressures, a highly competitive landscape and a challenging procurement environment, there are many factors putting pressure on the accurate costing of construction jobs.
The positive news is that construction software is increasingly being used by organisations of all sizes to tighten up the process of cost estimating for jobs and managing projects during the delivery phase.
A multi-stage process
When costing a job, there are various milestones. A preliminary estimate is created very early on in the project. This is based on a series of assumptions, with estimates based on previous project experience, the latest benchmarks on costs and an overview of what the client is looking to achieve.
While not necessarily very precise, this helps with initial decisions around viability. What follows is a more detailed estimate, which starts to breakdown individual elements such as labour, materials, equipment and overheads.
To get this right, a full understanding of the scope of work is needed, which involves widespread collaboration with the client and project team. From here, data is collected and
analysed, such as benchmark costs, before a full project estimate is created.
Tech support
Cost software, including estimating and pricing tools, is helping. It can be used to track project data, drive accuracy, analyse cost trends and help facilitate faster decision making.
That said, it is well known that many cost plans are still created on spreadsheets. While useful for small projects, the larger and more complicated a project, the higher the risk that this creates. All it takes is a bad formula buried deep in a cell to throw out the accuracy of the information that you are relying on.
As well as using specialised cost software, there are also simple tools that can supplement and enhance the workflow of an estimate. For example, Bluebeam allows drawings to be marked up and measured easily based on a PDF drawing. That helps estimators to accurately price jobs and order the right amount of materials.
This is all done digitally, removing the need to print multiple drawings in A1 and mark them up by hand, using pens and a scale ruler. As well as saving time, it removes cost, with less paper required and no need for large printers.
Thanks to cloud-based software, this can also take place in a live environment with clients and project teams, which means that decisions can be made much more collaboratively. It makes it easy to keep construction teams in sync, working on the latest project documents at any given time. It also creates an audit trail, with all changes and decisions logged and easily searchable.
AI is enhancing the process
As AI continues to advance, improvements are being made here too. At its most basic, machine learning tools can help to crunch huge amounts of data and spot trends, errors and outliers. At a more advanced level, custom GPTs can be developed that can interrogate cost plans and provide additional support.
Key benefits include speeding up processes and improving accuracy by removing manual checking, facilitating real-time monitoring of costs so that potential issues can be flagged, and comparing different information types, without the need for someone to manually transfer information from one place to another.
It is an area that Bluebeam is exploring. So far, we are using AI to allow documents and drawings to be easily compared and checked, which helps teams to keep track of changes. With automatic text recognition built in, key data can be easily taken from drawings to start building up project information too, minimising repetitive tasks and improving accuracy.
In an industry dominated by tight profit margins, the importance of accurate, efficient estimating cannot be overstated. As digital adoption accelerates, tools can augment human expertise and helps teams to deliver faster, more accurate cost estimates, grounded in real-time data that reflects the realities of projects.
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