Design Economics & Cost Planning Level 3 Flashcards
On the Motherwell project, can you explain how you present/advise your cost plans and reports to your client? How do you ensure that your presentation meets the client’s needs?
During the fortnightly meeting in which I presented Motherwell Cost Plan, there were various senior client stakeholders whom do not necessarily know the detail of the project nor are they concerned with the detail.
Therefore, I firstly provided an overview of the project scope, presenting the existing and proposed layouts. I then gave the overall cost within the cost plan, highlighting the key qualifications and risk which related to the condition of the existing area and the assumption that we would not be diverting any existing services.
I then went into further detail, taking them through the key headings within the cost plan.
On the Motherwell project, how did you determine the value of the provisional sum that you advised your client should be included in the cost plan?
The provisional sum related to the unknown site condition of the existing area. Based on my knowledge of this particular client’s stores and what this particular area of the store was being used for, I had a decent understanding of the type and volume of kit stores in a room of this size. So my provisional sum was built up based on an estimate of labour and skips to dismantle and remove the fittings.
On the Oxford St project, I note that you used BCIS data for inflation, what other sources could you have used?
I also could have used our in-house cost data for this client, which provides the rate at which the clients costs inflate for particular projects grouped into certain project types.
On the Oxford St project, when you benchmarked the project against historic cost data, can you explain how you dealt with the abnormals that you state you considered?
Well, firstly, I identified the abnormals, which largely related to the nature of the location of this project being Central London. This posed complexities relating to restrictions on deliveries, ease of unloading, wait and load skips and travel and lodgings of the labour fore. The plant location for this project was also on the roof, as the building was multiple storeys high, I had to consider the logistics in terms of craning.
Then, I adjusted the the benchmarked costs in relation to these items. However, to close the loop on this, I ran this by my line manager as he has dealt with a plethora of projects in the Central London location and I wanted to ensure my considerations were in line with the projects he had worked on.