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Understanding & Evaluating Construction Estimates

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Introduction

Understanding & Evaluating Construction Estimates is for everyone who deals with buildings or construction (and that's a LOT of people). Construction projects are VERY expensive (most people spend 20-50% of their income just on the building they live in), and yet so few people have the skill to analyze the fairness and value of construction costs. Therefore, being able to understand, summarize and analyze construction costs is a very valuable skill that can save or make lots of money.

Construction cost estimating is a profession with specialized skills, training, education, and certifications; but it's not rocket science. And there is some math, so it's scary to a LOT of people. There are a lot of moving parts in a big construction cost estimate: designers, insurance, labor, materials, equipment, subcontractors... The list can go on and on.

So how does a normal person without years of experience understand and evaluate an estimate? We are going to show you. Remember: Construction is not terribly difficult to understand. It's really just sticks and stones and pieces of glass and steel stacked neatly. What makes it hard is the complexity; the sheer number of components requires an organizational system. We have one and we present it in this 1-hour program.

Webinar

This program was last presented on May 26th, 2020.

Learning Objectives

  • Understand how to summarize a construction cost estimate.

  • Understand the basics of estimate analysis.

  • Learn what project and labor burden are.

  • Discuss the power and dangers of Xactimate.

  • Review some case studies and real world examples of construction cost estimate summary & analysis.

Program Outline

  1. Introduction

  2. How Do You Know?

  3. Detailed Analysis

  4. Burden

  5. Match Game

  6. Xactimate

  7. Conclusions

Click here to view previous posts about this program.