Calculation items and composition of works
22 February 20243D integration: 5D cost and 4D time
22 February 2024Once the costing of the individual work-tasks is ready, the next step is to multiply the cost of each work by its volume attribute in the new project.
In the process of calculating the total cost of a construction project, the key step is to summarize the costs of all individual costing work-items multiplied by the volume of this work in the project.
To create the total cost of a project, we start by calculating the cost of building one square meter of wall and multiplying the cost of its calculation (e.g. work - "1m2 of standard wall element installation") by the total number of square meters of walls in the project (e.g. the "Volume" or "Quantity" attribute of the Type "Wall Elements" entity from the CAD (BIM) project). Similarly, we apply this method to all categories of project elements listed in the estimate, multiplying the cost of each element by its volume in this project, which allows us to form a complete estimate of the entire project.
![](https://datadrivenconstruction.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Creating-a-project-estimate-1200x675.jpg)
In estimating the entire construction project, the cost of each cost activity is multiplied by the scope attribute of the corresponding entity in the project. The summation of all these costs gives the total project cost
In the context of a restaurant, the final cost of the event is calculated similarly and equals the final cost of the entire dinner, where the cost of each course multiplied by the number of guests adds up to the total cost of the check.
Just as a restaurant owner multiplies the cost of each meal by the number of servings to determine the total cost of the event, a construction manager adds up the cost of all project components to arrive at a complete construction estimate.
![](https://datadrivenconstruction.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Creating-a-project-estimate2-1200x675.jpg)
The final estimate is calculated by multiplying the cost of each item, taking into account the speculation behind them, by the number needed
Thus, for each work in the project, its final cost is determined, which, multiplied by the attribute volume of the entity corresponding to this work - gives the cost of the work groups, from which the final cost of the entire project is obtained. The total project cost presents a financial picture of the project, allowing developers and investors to understand the overall budget and the financial resources required to realize the project.
For millennia, the traditional method of calculating volumes has been manual methods of measuring volumetric and quantitative attributes using paper drawings and calculators. With the advent of the digital age, companies have discovered that this same information can now be automatically extracted from geometric data from CAD (BIM) models, revolutionising the way millennia-old ways of working with quantitative data, calculations and computations.
And if the processes of compiling resource bases, calculations and estimates are already perfected and semi-automated or fully automated, then obtaining quality information on the volume and quantity of elements for the last stage of the final estimate - remains a bottleneck in the processes of all calculations of cost and time characteristics of the project.
Modern approaches to estimating and estimating involve automatically deriving volumetric and quantitative attributes from CAD (BIM) models on which additional layers of information are layered. In addition to 3D geometric attributes, entities are supplemented with 4D time attributes, and 5D attributes, including aspects related to cost.