FREE Stellar Consulting Construction Estimate Template

06 May FREE Stellar Consulting Construction Estimate Template

Hi guys, Steve here. Welcome to my spreadsheet. This is something I’ve developed over the years working a few decades in aerospace and construction industries and ending with working since 2004 as $125 an hour construction management consultant and expert witness testifying in English and Spanish and writing reports for surety and other construction lawsuits. And so here’s a brief summary of my spreadsheet. We can go through the tabs and we could talk about a lot of things here. There’s a lot of hidden information but today this is just a brief summary and in the description below I’ll provide a link to this spreadsheet where you can download the spreadsheet in full Excel format with no password protection or other restrictions. You can feel free to remove my logo and verify all of the labor rates, the productivity rates, the materials rates, etc, your personal specific general conditions, profit and overhead, etc., verifying the formulas as well.

And feel free to make this spreadsheet your own. Like I said there’s a lot of additional information in hidden cells here, but to quickly and briefly go through it we could look at the Info tab that everything is driven from, from labor rates to waste factors, ceiling heights, roof pitch factors even. Once that information is plugged in, coming in and filling all the information and through the spreadsheet, picking up off of those line items and the Info tab where applicable. And everything calculates out including percentages of total, cost code columns. We’ve got some reference numbers so we can see what the total is per unit or the total just for the labor only for that item. I’ve got a divisions total tab that just breaks things down by straight division, and if you were bidding this, you could go through filling in what items were locked in as bids, subcontract and supplier bids came in for example. A Proposal tab, this can be driven directly which is really helpful when you have plans that are in flux in designs and changes.

You can be in the estimate and making modifications as they occur and make a proposal and then as new modifications happen everything is linked and so everything automatically changes. Pay applications and schedule of values (SOV) is kind of a whole separate thing. A lot of people don’t bill by the percentage of completion, of work in the ground and stored but it certainly is the way for commercial construction and it’s the most accurate and fair way of doing things. I went ahead on this sample spreadsheet and filled in some items and as a real brief overview on this on the percentage of completion we could come in and literally just type in the percentage of completion if we knew it or if in a case like this if we knew that there was two of those four items that had been installed then we can literally just plug in that formula. Equals two divided by the total and it will automatically calculate everything else as an example. And this is something that can be done on a tablet walking the project with an owner and the contractor and subcontractor so that everything can be measured and verified item by item right there in the field and even email out pay applications, pay certifications on the spot.

I’ve got a Cash Flow tab in here as well. I haven’t used it for a long time. It has been for some development projects that I’ve used it for, but it’s in here for anyone’s use. And some notes. I just have a place that, anytime you go through an estimate you should always have notes, some sort of a method of attaching notes immediately to that estimate in my opinion. And then here I’ve got some additional notes. I just started putting in some notes about this spreadsheet itself and how to manage and handle it. A couple of the highlights on this, since we have tied everything into the info tab for example, the ceiling heights, it’s something that’s commonly changed during value engineering. So right now we’ve got a 9-1/2 foot (9’0-1/2”) ceiling height on the first floor and a 9-1/2 (9’0-1/2”) foot ceiling on the second floor. If I was to come in here and add another foot as a possibility we could take a look at the total cost of the project and compare it because everything will have changed.

Everything in the entire budget and the entire spreadsheet will have changed. Everything that’s associated. So everything from 2×4’s and the insulation and gypsum and interior paint and sheathing on the outside and siding and exterior paint and downspouts and anything else that is related automatically is tied in to those items, those cells on the Info tab and therefore automatically change. So it’s a great tool for value engineering, being able to work through something like that. And we can take a look at what the total price is, click undo and come back over and see our price adjusted accordingly. So it’s a, like I said, just a great tool to be able to work with clients, show them exactly where your costs are at. Now as far as that is concerned, many of my clients end up using this tool and the proposal. You can see that I use the proposal with virtually full information, full exposure. The only thing that isn’t in here are the general conditions and overhead, contingencies and profit and those are all built in proportionally. But otherwise it’s an extraordinarily relatively speaking and extraordinarily transparent proposal and method. And that ties in apples to apples with schedule of values (SOV).

So everything is really straight forward, apples to apples, across the board from the estimate to the proposal to the schedule of values. And then it would go on from there to create and maintain a historic database of costs as well in the same format. Well that’s it. Like I said this is just the first video on this. You can keep an eye out on this playlist for this construction management playlist in my youtube channel for additional videos, for some more information, and I will keep an eye out for comments and questions and so will be happy to help anybody out. And also if anybody needs help or wants help with training or customization of the spreadsheet I could be available on an hourly basis for that as well. Alright? Well, I hope this is beneficial. I hope that some people that don’t have a tool currently better than this are able to implement this and use it and I hope it benefits them. It’s kind of an open-source concept, sharing. Thank you very much and I’ll see you next time!