Excel Tip (Multiplication)

Quantity surveyors, Accountants and others who are always/often using the MS Excel, sometime they used to feel uncomfortable when accessing Excel. Because of time. There are expert using many formulas in excel, it will save the time & to be accurate.

Here one small tips added, when multiplying the 2 or more cells if we use the normal formula like =ROUND(C6*E6,3)[See the Figure No.1], we wants to paste on every cells, only where required. Unless if we tracked that formula, then it will show 0.000 value, where multiple factors’ cells are blank.

Table No.1

To avoid this, the following formula will useful.=IF(C6="","",C6*E6) [See the Figure No.2],

Table No.2

Try it on your work.

The role of a Quantity Surveyors in Construction Projects

Save these 10 images and scroll one by one, it will be a nice presentation.

Source: A Linkedin User has uploaded.

Transparent Concrete

Made of fine concrete embedded with 4% by weight of optical glass fibers

New Architecture in Concrete... ... from translucent blocks and photo-engraved building fronts to revolutionary materials that promise to change the rules of construction as we know them today. We all know that concrete can be concocted to look like many things, but who would have thought that the rock-solid substance could be a substitute for a window? As it turns out, a handful of academic and commercial researchers are not just dreaming of this, they are busy making it happen. 

Building Information Modeling (BIM)

There are many questionnaire surveys are carrying out related to BIM, by the under graduate students who are studying the quantity surveying, building economics, construction management… etc. These questionnaire surveys I used to received from ‘LinkedIn’, but I do not have any idea about BIM. I have got an article about BIM, which is prepared by RICS. The same I shared here and I hope this will be a useful document to all.

Before, there are some sentences about RICS.

Royal Institute of Charted Surveyors (RICS)
RICS is the world's leading qualification when it comes to professional standards in land, property and construction.

In a world where more and more people, governments, banks and commercial organizations demand greater certainty of professional standards and ethics, attaining RICS status is the recognized mark of property professionalism.

Over 100,000 property professionals working in the major established and emerging economies of the world have already recognized the importance of securing RICS status by becoming members.

RICS is an independent professional body originally established in the UK by Royal Charter. Since 1868, RICS has been committed to setting and upholding the highest standards of excellence and integrity - providing impartial, authoritative advice on key issues affecting businesses and society. RICS is a regulator of both its individual members and firms enabling it to maintain the highest standards and providing the basis for unparalleled client confidence in the sector.

Source: RICS Middle East and North Africa (Press Release 2014)

Building Information Modeling (BIM)

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is both a new technology and a new way of working. BIM is a term that has been around for a while in manufacturing and engineering industries, and is now beginning to make an impact in the construction sector. At a strategic level, BIM offers the capacity to address many of the industries failings including waste reduction, value creation and improved productivity.

The process of implementing BIM moves away from using conventional word-processing and CAD into the increased use of common standards and product orientated representations. BIM changes the emphasis by making the model the primary tool for documentation, from which an increasing number of documents, or more accurately “reports”, such as plans, schedules and bills of quantities may be derived.

BIM involves much more than simply implementing new software. It is a different way of thinking. This requires a move away from the traditional workflow, with all parties (including architects, surveyors and contractors) sharing, and effectively working on, a common information pool. This is a substantial shift from the more traditional convention where parties often work on separate information pools using several different (and usually incompatible) software packages. In essence, BIM involves building a digital prototype of the model and simulating it in a digital world.

Essentially, BIM combines technology with new working practices to improve the quality of the delivered product and also improve the reliability, timeliness and consistency of the process. It is equally applicable to asset and facilities management as it is to construction. In its purest form, BIM provides a common single and coordinated source of structured information to support all parties involved in the delivery process, whether that be to design, construct, and/or operate. Because all parties involved with a BIM project have access to the same data, the information loss associated with handing a project over from design team to construction team and to building owner/operator is kept to a minimum.

A BIM model contains representations of the actual parts and pieces being used to construct a building along with geometry, spatial relationships, geographic information, quantities and properties of building components (for example manufacturers’ details). BIM can be used to demonstrate the entire building lifecycle from construction through to facility operation.

Often (mistakenly) referred to as 3D, 4D or nD, BIM should not be confused with the number of dimensions used to represent a building. At its simplest level, BIM provides a common environment for all information defining a building, facility or asset, together with its common parts and activities.

This includes building shape, design and construction time, costs, physical performance, logistics and more. More importantly, the information relates to the intended objects (components) and processes, rather than relating to the appearance and presentation of documents and drawings. More traditional 2D or 3D drawings may well be outputs of BIM, however, instead of generating in the conventional way ie. as individual drawings, could all be produced directly from the model as a “view” of the required information. BIM changes the traditional process by making the model the primary tool for the whole project team. This ensures that all the designers, contractors and sub contractors maintain their common basis for design, and that the detailed relationships between systems can be explored and fully detailed. Working with BIM will require new skills and these will have to be learned from practice.

BIM is not a panacea – it remains just as possible to produce a poor model, in terms of its functionality, its constructability or its value, as it is to produce poor drawings, schedules or any other, more traditional, form of information. Also, in the absence of any pro-active collaborative management effort, models may end up being prepared to suit the originator as opposed to being structured and presented with all parties to the design and construction team in mind. Ensuring that there is an agreed structure and exchange protocol in place to suit all parties will improve certainty, confidence and consistency. By moving to a shared information model environment, project failures and cost overruns become less likely. BIM certainly means having a better understanding and control of costs and schedules as well as being able to ensure that the right information is available at the right time to reduce requests for information, manage change and limit (or even eliminate) unforeseen costs, delays and claims.

Clients are often in the best position to lead the introduction of BIM. Understanding the value of building information and its impact on the clients own business is leading many clients to require BIM to specify the standards and methods to be used in its adoption. Clients can also provide clear requirements for facilities management information to be handed over at project completion more easily with BIM. Some international clients are even now going so far as to penalise lack of information (or the lack of its provision at established points in the construction process).

More recent experience indicates a trend in large clients and government agencies across the globe to mandate the use of BIM, not only for delivery of the building, but also as a tool to manage operationally. BIM is equally applicable to support FM and asset management as it is to design and construction. Indeed, the output of the design model may well replace the need for traditional O&M manuals. Being able to interrogate an intelligent model, as opposed to searching through outdated manuals, perhaps linked to interactive guidance on the repair and/or maintenance process has obvious advantages.

However, the largest single barrier to exploiting BIM is the lack of awareness. Clients are frequently unaware that they can have a major influence on the deliverables from a project.

BIM has the potential to impact every aspect of the Surveying Profession. It has applications for those involved with Property, FM, Building Surveying, Civil as well as traditional building construction, and should be seen as an opportunity to deliver new service streams and to extend our professional reach into new areas spanning the complete asset life cycle. BIM is not going to go away, and so we must, therefore, learn to adapt and embrace or risk the threat of losing ground to others.

I will share one more article about BIM (BIM is key to future of QS profession).

Construction Company Organization (LLC)

How a construction company organizes for its work depends on number and size of projects, project complexity, and geographical distribution of the work.

 Limited Liability Company

A form of organization known as the limited liability Company (L.L.C.), permitted in most states, and combines many of the attributes and advantages of the corporation and of the partnership. For example, the owners of an L.L.C., who are known as ‘‘members’’ after executing the required legal articles of organization, enter into an operating agreement in which one of their number is designated as the manager of the company.

The company does not pay taxes on its profits, but rather the individual members have the prorate share of their percentage of ownership of the company added to their income for taxation purposes. On the other hand, there is no individual liability of any of the members for losses or debts of the company as there would be if the ownership were in the form of a partnership. Additional members may be added to or dropped from the company by a vote or written consent of 100% of all of the members.

No member, other than the manager, has any power or authority to bind the company, unless such a person has been specifically authorized in writing by the manager to act on behalf of the company. A manager may be removed in the event of his or her neither willful or intentional violation nor rack less disregard of the manager’s duties to the company. The manager’s replacement will be selected by the members who originally selected the manager. Such replacement will be decided by a majority vote of the members.

Reference
BUILDING DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION HANDBOOK

Robert F. Borg

Chairman, Kreisler Borg Florman General Construction Company

Scarsdale, New York

Terms of the Week-Business Dictionary (Part II)

Cost control
The process or activity on controlling costs associated with an activity, process, or company. Cost control typically includes

(1) Investigative procedures to detect variance of actual costs from budgeted costs

(2) Diagnostic procedures to ascertain the cause(s) of variance

&
(3) Corrective procedures to effect realignment between actual and budgeted costs.

Marginal cost

The increase or decrease in the total cost of a production run for making one additional unit of an item. It is computed in situations where the breakeven point has been reached: the fixed costs have already been absorbed by the already produced items and only the direct (variable) costs have to be accounted for. Marginal costs are variable costs consisting of labor and material costs, plus an estimated portion of fixed costs (such as administration overheads and selling expenses). In companies where average costs are fairly constant, marginal cost is usually equal to average cost. However, in industries that require heavy capital investment (automobile plants, airlines, mines) and have high average costs, it is comparatively very low. The concept of marginal cost is critically important in resource allocation because, for optimum results, management must concentrate its resources where the excess of marginal revenue over the marginal cost is maximum. Also called choice cost, differential cost or incremental cost.

Net price

A final price after deducting all discounts and rebates.

Vision statement

An aspirational description of what an organization would like to achieve or accomplish in the mid-term or long-term future. It is intended to serves as a clear guide for choosing current and future courses of action.

Opportunity cost

A benefit, profit, or value of something that must be given up to acquire or achieve something else. Since every resource (land, money, time, etc.) can be put to alternative uses, every action, choice, or decision has an associated opportunity cost. Opportunity costs are fundamental costs in economics, and are used in computing cost benefit analysis of a project. Such costs, however, are not recorded in the account books but are recognized in decision making by computing the cash outlays and their resulting profit or loss.

Austerity budget

A budget that is imposed on a country by its government with the purpose of reducing the national deficit by way of cutting down on consumer spending.

Earmark

The act of setting something aside for a specific use or purpose in the future. For example, goods may be earmarked prior to being exported in the future. Most commonly used to refer to funds that have been set aside in order to pay for a specific project.

Masters of Business Administration (MBA)

An advanced college degree, earned by those who successfully graduate from their college or university's MBA program. As with other advanced degrees, traditionally a student will have already received a Bachelors degree in some area of study, before working towards his or her MBA. A typical MBA program deals with multiple aspects of business, including finance and management skills. Also called Masters in Business Administration or Master of Business Administration.

Yankee bond

Dollar denominated bond sold in the US by a foreign bank, corporation, or government utility. It the US equivalent of Eurobond.

Tax holiday

A temporary period, during which time the government removes certain taxes (usually sales tax) on certain items, in order to encourage the consumption or purchase of these items. The most common application of this is a tax-free weekend, which most states hold shortly before school begins in the fall, during which time sales tax is removed on clothing, school supplies, and/or other similar items. Not all areas engage in tax holidays; it is up to the government of that area.

How to Read a Financial Statement

A company’s financial statement is used to show a company’s performance over a certain period of time, generally every fiscal quarter. The financial statement really consists of three different statements: balance sheets, cash flow statements and income statements.

 By being able to read a financial statement, you can determine where a company has made or lost money, where the money went and how the company stands financially. The financial statement gives shareholders an accounting of how their investment is performing.

Components of a Financial Statement

Balance Sheets

Represent the assets, liabilities and the net worth or shareholder equity of the company. Assets make up all the property the company owns, including bank accounts, real estate, machinery etc. An asset can also be intangible such as a trademark or patent.

Liabilities consist of the money the company owes others. This can include leases on real estate, loans, accounts payable to suppliers of material, tax liabilities or obligations to deliver product. Liabilities also include employee payrolls and money borrowed from banks.

Shareholder equity represents the company’s net worth if it were liquidated and what each shareholder would receive after paying the creditors of the company.

Cash Flow Statements

Reports on the inflow and outflow of the company’s money. The cash flow statement is divided into financing activities, operating activities and investment activities. In combination, these three parts show the change in capital position the company had over a period of time.

Income Statements

Show how much revenue the company took in over a specified time period and how much money was spent to get that revenue. The income statement shows the company’s net earnings or losses on the bottom line and begins with all the cash the company took in at the top, and goes through all the expenses it took to make that money with the net figure on the bottom.

Knowing how to read a financial statement gives an investor or analyst a clear picture of the financial position of a business. Nevertheless, past performance does not generally guarantee future results; keep this in mind before investing in any company.

5 Steps to Delegating Your Tasks

Step 1: Put Yourself in a Position to Delegate
Delegation is when you assign responsibility to another person to carry out a specific task. The task could be large (such as "revamp our training department" or small (such as "take this letter to the post office").

It doesn't matter how large or small the task is. What matters is that there is another person that you can delegate the task to.

 You don't have to have an empire of people around you that serve as your minions. Rather, you do need to put yourself in an organizational position that there are good people to whom you can delegate responsibility. These people could report to you directly. Or, there may be a group of people that are in a support capacity in the company that you could rely upon. Regardless, you need to be in a position to delegate tasks to others, if you want to get more done than you have hours available in the day.

Step 2: Get Ready Mentally

The second step is to make sure you have mentally accepted the fact that you need to delegate to others. You may be hesitant to delegate to other people for a number of reasons.

You may fall into the trap of feeling that it will be faster to get something done yourself rather than having to explain it to others. Or, you may feel as if the other person already has enough to do and you don't want to add more to their plate. You need to move beyond this type of thinking in order to effectively delegate your tasks.

You will never be able to grow as a project manager if you feel that another person can't do something as fast or as proficiently as you. Sure, the first couple of times may be a bit rough, but you will be surprised how much easier things become. You'll also be pleasantly surprised when you find they can do something even better than you!

Step 3: Create Your "To-Do List"

Your next step is to put your "To-Do" list together. Take some time to do this right. One of the best ways to do this is to clear your desk and pull out your favorite pen and pad of paper. Start thinking about all the things that you need to get done.

This doesn't have to be in any particular order. Include those tasks that are related to projects (such as updating a status report) to everything else (such as completing your open enrollment insurance form).

Let everything come out on this piece of paper. You can include personal, professional, or other obligations and commitments you have. You'll start to feel better as you begin to size up how many things are weighing you down.

 Step 4: Cull Your List

You are going to have a sizable list. You will be amazed at how much 'stuff' you have on your plate to accomplish. Some of these things are extremely important and others now appear to be just a waste of time.

 Go through this list and delete as many items as possible. There may be items on your list that are MONTHS old that you've been carrying in your head for that entire time. Get rid of it. There may be items that you at one time thought were important but now they just seem trivial. Cross them out!

You are now left with a purged and manageable list that you can delegate to others. Narrow your delegation list down even further by removing those items that ONLY you can do.

 Step 5: Begin Delegating
Take this relevant and meaningful list of tasks and meet with those who are on your team. Let them know the process you've just been through and the fact that you need their help.

You need to focus on tasks that are in your area of expertise - where you can make the biggest difference for the entire team. You can then divvy up what is left on your list and spread it out amongst the team.

Your team will appreciate your request for help and that these tasks really are important to get done quickly.

History of Quantity Surveyor

Prior to the Napoleonic Wars, Britain, in common with its conti nental neighbours, had a construction industry based on separate trades.
This system still exists in France as ‘lots sépare’, and variations of it can be found throughout Europe, including in Germany. The system works like this: instead of the multi-traded main contractor that operates in the UK, each trade is tendered for, and subsequently engaged separately under, the coordination of a project manager.

The Napoleonic Wars, however, brought change and nowhere more so than in Britain – the only large European state that Napoleon failed to invade or occupy. The government of the day was obliged to construct barracks to house the huge garrisons of soldiers who were then being transported across the English Channel. As the need for the army barracks was so urgent and the time to prepare drawings, specifi cations, etc. was so short, the contracts were let on a ‘settlement by fair valuation based on measurement after completion of the works’. This meant that constructors were given the opportunity and encouragement to innovate and to problem solve – something that was progres sively withdrawn from them in the years that followed.

The same need for haste, coupled with the sheer magnitude of the individ ual projects, led to many contracts being let to a single builder or group of tradesmen ‘contracting in gross’, and the general contractor was born. When peace was made the Offi ce of Works and Public Buildings, which had been increasingly concerned with the high cost of measurement and fair value procurement – in particular, in the construction of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle – decided that enough was enough. In 1828 separate trades contracting was discontinued for public works in England in favour of contracting in gross.

The following years saw contracting in gross (general contracting) rise to dominate, and with this development the role of the builder as an innovator, problem-solver and design team member was stifl ed to the point where contractors operating in the UK system were reduced to simple executors of the works and instructions (although in Scotland the separate trades system survived until the early 1970s).

Then in 1834 archi tects decided that they wished to divorce them selves from surveyors and establish the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), exclusively for architects. The grounds for this great schism were that architects wished to distance themselves from surveyors and their perceived ‘obnoxious commercial interest in construction’. The events of 1834 were also responsible for the birth of another UK phenomenon, the quantity surveyor.

Source: Quantity Surveyor’s Pocket Book

The Origin of Bill of Quantities

Bill of Quantities is synonymous with Quantity Surveyors. The profession was said to have emerged in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century, although the firm of Henry Cooper and Sons of Reading was established as early as 1785. Prior to the first recorded usage of the term "Quantity Surveyor" in 1859, the terms "measurer", "custom surveyor" or "surveyor" were used.(ASAQS, 2006)

BOQ emerged in the 19^th century after the Industrial revolution in Europe. In those early days the Quantity Surveyors acted for the master tradesmen, measuring the work after completion for use in making payment to workers and frequently submitted as partisan Final Accounts to the building owner to claim for payment. Later on it was the practice of the building owners to call for tenders before any work was undertaken. A procedure was then developed to invite several master builders to submit tenders for the total price of the project rather than a collection of prices from master tradesmen or what is known today as sub-contractors. (ASAQS, 2006).

For the purpose of submitting the bid or tender, each builder then has to come out with accurate estimates of the project cost or tender. It was done by measuring and quantifying the quantities of all materials and labour necessary to complete the work, i.e. preparing a bill BOQ for the project. As each builder had to prepare his own BOQ for each project, they came to realise that they were duplicating a lot of effort by each measuring the same quantities from the architect's drawings. They realised that it is more economical for them as a group to employ one surveyor to measure the work and prepare the BOQ for them.

The builders will then price the BOQ and submit their tenders on the same basis. They would share the cost of the Quantity Surveyor (or the successful builder will pay the surveyor) and include the payment in their bids. On the part of the building owners themselves, since they ended up paying for the Quantity Surveyor's fees, it finally dawned on them that they might as well employ him directly and get some cost advice from him as well. (ASAQS, 2006; Myles, 2006, CIQS 2006).

Apart from some minor changes in term of method of measurement, content and format of presentation, BOQ is still a document detailing description and quantities of all the construction work of a project. It may now may come in elemental, trade, work section or operational form. With the advent of ICT, the process of preparing s has evolved from the tedious manual and time consuming processes to semi-automated or fully automated processes involving the use of computers and sophisticated specialised software. But the whole process is still involving the toiling over many hundred drawings

in doing the time consuming “taking off”, many hours of meetings and discussion with the client and other consultants and drafting, checking, editing and printing the 300 – 500 pages document.

Source: Paper presented at International Conference on Construction Industry 2006

Cost Model

What is a cost model? How does it differ from a cost database? What is a cost model used for? Are there different types of cost models?

A cost model is an expression of the scope and cost of an asset or type of asset including specific assumptions regarding schedule. Usually, a cost model is a detailed expression of actual scope in terms of quantities and their respective historic cost and productivities. A detailed cost model complete with actual scope and cost database can be converted to elemental cost models, unit costs, or even system cost models.

A well-developed cost model can enable an owner or contractor to turn around a fairly high quality estimate to management during the conceptual and planning periods in the project life cycle. It is important that owners recognize however that a cost model regardless of the detail supporting it carries with it significant risks that must be addressed with contingency allowances etc.. A cost model requires adjustment for period escalation, location factors, market adjustments and other factors.

A cost model based estimate can also provide detail to actually allow the owner or contractors team to understand changes in cost as design progresses.(such as quantities or types of material or equipment)

A cost model system that tracks, for example the cost of major units ( equipment) and their installation can help a project team make informed decisions very quickly.

In actuality, cost models can vary significantly in complexity and purpose.
A simple square foot cost model at an asset component level can be developed and maintained fairly simply and inexpensively and can yield a valuable tool to an owner if managed correctly. It does have its limitations however, when a need arises to evaluate escalating costs of a new facility compared to the historically based cost model. Data you would need to develop and maintain might include total cost , total square feet, total pieces of equipment etc., for each building.

A detailed asset cost model is potentially more expensive to initially develop and because it is more detailed, also more involved to maintain. Data needed here might include material quantities, material costs, labour hours, labour costs, equipment costs etc. It has the strengths of providing detail to allow analysis of changes in scope and cost that the higher level approach does not afford. It also is advantageous because of the ability to develop system cost models, equipment unit cost models, material unit costs etc. Also, detail can always be rolled up to provide higher level cost models. A cost model that is based only on high level data cannot be broken down into detail quite so easily if at all.

Summary:
Cost modeling using actual scope, cost and schedule can be very useful when an owner expects to build multiple like kind facilities.

To be most likely to succeed, planning for the cost modeling effort would begin with the planning for construction of the model scope.

There are many types and levels of cost models.

A detailed cost model does not answer the question of what a like facility will likely cost without consideration of many other factors:

Ø  Project Time Period

Ø  Project duration

Ø  Project location

Ø  Economic and Market conditions

Ø  Site differentials

Ø  Scope refinements

An owner or contractor will want to consider the cost versus the benefits of building the various types of cost models and chose the approach that best matches their specific needs.

How to get the advantages from cost models & How to maintain the cost model

On a recent project, found that an owner who had built similar facilities with many consistent elements many times had not collected its actual costs in sufficient detail to be able to determine historical unit costs or productivities save at a very high level. A new asset development program began and a determination was made to structure this new programs data such that historical data would be able to be reconstructed. (as a basis for cost model development.)

As the first phase of the program entered construction, realized that the construction contracts were not structured in such a way as to provide detailed actual cost for many scopes. In order to mitigate this we performed detailed reconciliations of scope and cost during the bid phase of the program.

When phase 2 was begun, set about developing cost models for use in phases 2 and future using the best data available from phase one. Many of the assets were originally expected to be exactly like those of phase 1.

The starting point for our cost model was the phase 1 definitive estimate.
We chose this as a starting point because the estimate had all the detail scope and structure already established. We proceeded to update a copy of this detail with issued for construction or better quantities, (as-built) when available. We also updated our cost model detail with the best actual productivity information available from phase 1.

Next we adjusted labor rates and subcontractor overheads to reflect the best actual experience we had from phase 1. Finally, we adjusted equipment and materials to reflect actual experience as best we could. The result was a very detailed reflection of the best scope and cost data available in our model. From there when we needed to develop a quick estimate of an element of that model, we were able to split that part out and apply escalation and any other risk factors we found appropriate. We could turn around a very detailed cost model picture of a scopes cost very quickly. Iterations were also simplified when what ifs were needed.