Calculating Building Costs

Construction and building costs often are tough to pin down. Contractors can struggle to get accurate numbers. There are many estimating software packages that claim they will help develop crisp numbers, but garbage in equals garbage out. In other words, to get crisp, solid numbers, the estimator needs to know exactly how long it takes to do something under given conditions. This may work well in tract building where one house is just like another, or in manufactured housing situations, but custom building and remodeling cost estimates can be baffling.

Worst Case

It was not uncommon for me to make mistakes during the bidding process. I was the eternal optimist. It always seemed to turn out that I could work faster on paper than in the field. Mud, cold temperatures and other delays can eat into productivity.

One method of calculating costs is to figure a worst case scenario. The problem with this method lies in the fact that the final number may burst a construction budget.

High quality construction companies keep good records. They know how much time - on average - it takes to pour a room addition footer. Or a company knows how many feet of custom exterior wall it can frame in a day. A tile setter knows that he can install more square feet of 8x8 tile than slate in 8 hours.

If you find contractors who keep records like this, they can usually produce solid numbers that allow them to make a fair profit and gives you good value at the same time.