Cost Control Estimating
Cost control estimating is the follow up to budget planning and development, once the design process is initiated. As the project design progresses from schematic to construction documents, each phase needs to be assessed so that the cost estimates reflect the additional information that has become available. The focus here is to ensure that specification changes or “scope creep”, market conditions and other factors are not negatively impacting the hard construction cost baseline.
During this cost assessment phase, there is usually the need for Value Engineering to ensure that the project requirements are being maximized within the constraints of the overall budget. At this initial stage of the project life cycle, the cost estimates required may be defined as Class C, Class B or Substantive, and Class A or Pre-Tender.