Cost Planning
02
Cost Planning and Estimating
A good quantity surveyor knows what things cost and who can deliver a trade, service or product locally. Anything else is just plain guesswork. Cost Planning and Estimating is our bread and butter service and where our clients recognise us as leaders in the field of quantity surveying. We invest significant resources into researching and maintaining links with local sub-contractors, suppliers and industry partners to ensure we always have the very latest cost information, trends and market demand and capacity to allow us to be first class estimators and cost planners. Our belief is that a quantity surveyor needs to know cost, our systems and research allow mean we know construction costs.
Beacon Consulting act as your buget watchdogs, starting soon after the project sign-off of the project cost plan and through the design phase to completion of the finished design and tender, we ensure the design team and budget keep on track with the initial cost plan. We monitor and control costs by continually updating our estimates based on the ever improving documentation. We attend design meetings to ensure we are kept in the loop with relevant information and to assist the designers with any cost information they need for design decision making. And furthermore, by being so proactively involved, we ensure time is not lost at tender stage due to an over budget tender return. Cost Planning and estimating revolves around refinement of the available information and the proactive input from us and other consultants. We will update the Cost Plan by preparing more detailed estimates from the evolving information by measuring approximate quantities in as much detail as the design information allows.
Additionally we will prepare a detailed reconciliation with the previous cost plan and include recommendations for design and specification changes to correct apparent cost overruns from the initial cost plan. During the early part of design many very important design decisions will be taken. Collectively, decisions on structural systems, external cladding, services design etc. “lock in” much of the design cost and by engaging Beacon Consulting at these early stages we can actively work with you to critically appraise solution alternatives proposed by the designers to help ensure that lowest cost and value for money is achieved.