Project Cost Review

How do you know if a project bid is good? On today’s show we are talking about how to value engineer a project.

We’re going to look at a project that has a firm bid on it. Overall, the construction bid seemed to be fairly reasonable in terms of total price per square foot. Having said that, there could still be problems in the bid. Some line items might be too high and others might be too low. One of the most common mistakes is to accept a total price merely because the overall price seems to be in the ballpark.

When we conduct a budget review we look at every single line item. When problems occur in a budget, it is often because the scope of the work has an error in it. We double check the contractors numbers of every single component of the project. We use material estimating software that measure the dimensions for each material using the architectural drawings. We measure the roof area, the wall area, the number of electrical fixtures, all the doors, you get the idea. There are literally hundreds of line items to be estimated. It is in this process that we find errors. --------------

Host: Victor Menasce

email: podcast@victorjm.com