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Bench marking for construction costs

QSs' involved with both pre-contract and post-contract may be aware of the process of bench-marking, in-case one is not, this may be of help depending on the quantum of work one is looking to bench-mark.

The process of bench-marking is essential, especially at the stage of preliminary cost estimates.

What I would do here is first try to establish a simple explanation to what cost bench-marking is, so that the process becomes clear.

Right, so the process of bench-marking involves a very basic elemental comparison of a particular type of project.

Please note my mention of a particular type of project here, since one cannot possibly establish a comparative between a residential and a commercial project, nor will one be able to establish a valid comparison between projects in various zones of construction, hence a similarity between the projects will have to be achieved either by the use of permutations or by simply comparing projects which would remain similar at the base.

The second word of importance is elemental, the importance of this remains for the fact the the cost per unit for the elemental area will be more accurate that the cost per unit of the overall project area, will explain this with a simple example:

Presuming that the year of construction is the same. We can establish a comparison between a 2B+G+37 storey to a B+G+20 storey, this is possible if we take up the process of elemental costing where in the cost per unit area is considered for the element alone i.e cost per unit area of the substructure including basements is taken on the basement area alone. Likewise the cost for the podium is considered for the podium area alone and the superstructure for the  super-built up area.
(I have still not gotten a hang of inserting tables into my blog so please excuse the monotony, will try to put in a link to some google sheets at the end so that you can access it.)

Additionally, taking cost for elemental area can help one compare projects that have similar elements but different outputs for example 3B+G+37 can be elementally compared for the substructure 3B+7P+25.

Appended is the link to a sample bench marking on Google sheets which could be used as reference.

Benchmarking - Example Sheet

Hope this article was useful.

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