Cost Estimation Performance in the Construction Projects: A Systematic Review and Future Directions

This paper reports findings of a study that captures cost estimation practices and techniques prevalent in the construction industry in Oman. It also identifies the success and risk factors that are encountered in the cost estimation process. Eighty structured questionnaires were distributed to some professionals working in construction projects, selected randomly from large and medium size enterprises across the Sultanate. A response rate of 56% was achieved. The results showed that the unit rate method, the use of historical data and benchmarking are the most common methods used for cost estimation. Success and risk factors as reported by respondents were analyzed and ranked accordingly. The main sources of risk were reported by respondents as “Unclear reading and understanding of specifications”, “Lack of clear documents of the project scope of work”, and “Unavailability of Resources”. This study provides an insight understanding of revealed practices and techniques and globally.

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Advances in Civil Engineering

Cost estimation is the most important preliminary process in any construction project. Therefore, construction cost estimation has the lion’s share of the research effort in construction management. In this paper, we have analysed and studied proposals for construction cost estimation for the last 10 years. To implement this survey, we have proposed and applied a methodology that consists of two parts. The first part concerns data collection, for which we have chosen special journals as sources for the surveyed proposals. The second part concerns the analysis of the proposals. To analyse each proposal, the following four questions have been set. Which intelligent technique is used? How have data been collected? How are the results validated? And which construction cost estimation factors have been used? From the results of this survey, two main contributions have been produced. The first contribution is the defining of the research gap in this area, which has not been fully covered .

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Open Journal of Accounting

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MOJ Civil Engineering

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Construction projects are getting progressively complex and their scales are getting sophisticated. Along these lines, it is getting more problematic to finish the projects inside planned cost limits. In Oromia public building construction projects these problems were raised as a typical challenge. Hence, evaluation of factors affecting the accuracy of cost estimation in public projects was the aim of this study. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized for information assortment. Relative Importance Index (RII) was utilized for information investigation. Totally sixty-two variables were investigated and the best five most significant were selected by this assessment based on the average view of respondents. These significant factors are; Material price/accessibility /source /quality /imports, Experience and ability of the consultant, Variability in the Economy of the country, and financial conditions of client. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients (rho) investigation was conducted by the assistance of SPSS 20 version for a testing level of connections among respondents on the positioning of the factors affecting the accuracy of cost estimation. Spearman's rank correlation results were 0.823 among Clients and Consultants, 0.813 among clients and contractors, and 0.802 among Consultants and Contractors. The outcome shows that the rate of the rank correlations was a high positive number, which implies there is a positive connection between them on the ranking of factors disturbing the accurateness of cost estimation in public building construction projects in western Oromia.

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This text provides an introduction to the importance of estimating construction costs in the construction industry. Accurate cost estimates are crucial for successful project completion and ensuring all parties involved receive fair compensation. The process of cost estimation involves detailed analysis and compilation of bid documents based on specifications and work drawings. The accuracy of cost estimates relies on the estimator's skill and their ability to follow the project's progress and obtain up-to-date information. The text also discusses the budget plan, which calculates the costs required for materials, wages, and other project-related expenses. The budget plan serves as a tool for controlling costs and preventing resource wastage. The stages of preparing the cost budget plan, such as calculating the volume of work, analyzing unit prices, and creating a detailed bill of quantity (BoQ), are explained. The text concludes with the results and discussion section, which includes information on the highest average unit price per square meter for multi-storey buildings and the percentage of building work components. Additionally, it mentions standard and non-standard cost components based on experience and research in the field.

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The contractor's project overhead costs are the on-site related costs for production support in undertaking a project, such as those for supervision, office, utilities and services. Unlike direct costs, they are not directly connected with the performance of any particular element of a project, but are required for running the project as a whole. Despite the recommended practice of estimating the contractor's field overhead for a project as line items, the alternative method of applying a selected rate as a percentage of direct cost still is used widely. As an ongoing research on building cost, Empirical models of project overhead rate have been developed from historical data in the present study. The nature and significance of the contractor's project overhead are first explored, along with factors that have an influence on the overhead rate. The bid data for 173 building projects collected from a large construction firm in Taiwan covering a variety of work is analyzed and a classification is established whereby the projects' overhead rates range between 0.0171 and 0.2912. The data is divided into two parts for model development and model testing according to order of time. Then, two methods of estimation are compared in their modeling and prediction errors: the cluster center method of categorizing projects into 24 groups and the multiple regression method using four variables, i.e. size, duration, type of work, and location. Either method can achieve an average error of about 3% of direct cost in modeling as well as in prediction. An improvement on the subjective rate-applying method, the model may coexist with the itemized estimation method as a checking mechanism and is potentially useful to contractors as well as owners and consultants. Implications for the building industry and recommendations for future research are also discussed.

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International Journal of Scientific Research in Computer Science, Engineering and Information Technology

The Smart Estimation for Construction is made especially for people those who are unaware of construction work related to the estimation of raw materials and labour required to make a construction project (buildings). The main difficulty arises during construction is to decide the quantity of raw materials, labours and resources required in future. The software strives to identify the causes of price differences arising at each stage of cost calculation, and provides the solutions of cost reduction. The main challenge in the existing software is the cost estimation of construction with more accuracy. Many estimation models are introduced in the course of time, which concludes that software cost estimation is not precise and new methods or models should be proposed very often. Cost, quantity and quality analysis for building structures are developed at all stages of the investment process. The project describes the basic forms of overall cost calculation of building structures and building works.

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The objective of this study is to determine the critical cost influencing factors of building construction projects. The importance of accurate estimates during the early stages of capital projects has been widely recognized for many years. Early project estimates represent a key ingredient in business unit decisions and often become the basis for a project's ultimate funding. Identification of cost-determinant variables and evaluation of their degree of influence play an essential role in construction building. The objective of this research is to extract the key cost-influencing factors with new concept and methods to help control the expenditure. Paper served as a summary of literature review done on variables affecting at the planning stage construction cost estimates are identified through literature. Most important several to analysis them & ranking the most important factor cost influencing factor in estimated to helpful the whole budget the overall cost to help the proje.

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